ruinéevsruinésWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“ruinée” and “ruinés” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#24,014
“ruinée” frequency rank
#37,536
“ruinés” frequency rank
61550
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ruinée ruinés
Definition Féminin singulier de ruiné. Masculin pluriel de ruiné.

Same sound, different letters: ruinée vs ruinés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. ruinée (CVVCVV) and ruinés (CVVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
ruinée
6 ch
ruinés

Homophone desk: ruinée vs ruinés

This is the hard kind. ruinée and ruinés are pronounced identically (\ʁɥi.ne\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by a single letter - e in “ruinée” becomes s in “ruinés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61550, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ruinée is recorded at frequency rank #24,014, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁɥi.ne\. ruinés is at rank #37,536, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʁɥi.ne\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 61550, this pair ranks #91,659 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ruinée vs ruinés

Shared letters: inrué. Private to "ruinée": e. Private to "ruinés": s.

"ruinée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "ruinés" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ruinée" for "ruinés" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ʁɥi.ne\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "ruinée" vs "ruinés" - which ranks higher?
"ruinée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,014 in our French list, against #37,536 for "ruinés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

"ruinée" and "ruinés" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ruinée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ruinés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #91,659 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ruinée" and "ruinés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ruinés vs Rune". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #91,659 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list