ruinervsruinésConfusable pair

Quick tell: ruiner is a verb, ruinés is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ruiner” is a verb and “ruinés” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,938
“ruiner” frequency rank
#37,536
“ruinés” frequency rank
48474
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ruiner ruinés
Definition Détruire, transformer en ruine, abattre. Masculin pluriel de ruiné.

Same sound, different letters: ruiner vs ruinés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. ruiner and ruinés follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
ruiner
6 ch
ruinés

Same sound, different spelling - ruiner / ruinés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: ruiner and ruinés carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ʁɥi.ne\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48474, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ruiner is recorded at frequency rank #10,938, classified as averb, 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 48474, this pair ranks #178,608 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ruiner vs ruinés

Shared letters: inru. Private to "ruiner": e. Private to "ruinés": sé.

"ruiner" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "ruinés" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ruiner ← riuner · rruiner · ruienr · ruinerr · ruinner · ruinre · runier

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ruiner" and "ruinés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ruiner" is a verb and "ruinés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ruiner" or "ruinés"?
"ruiner" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,938 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

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ruiner" 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 #178,608 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ruiner" and "ruinés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ruinés vs Rune". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #178,608 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