Which to use
“silence” and “silences” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,608
- “silence” frequency rank
- #24,391
- “silences” frequency rank
- 25999
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | silence | silences |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Absence de bruit. | Pluriel de silence. |
Same sound, different letters: silence vs silences
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. silence runs 7 letters (CVCVCCV) against silences's 8 (CVCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Homophone desk: silence vs silences
This is the hard kind. silence and silences are pronounced identically (\si.lɑ̃s\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “silence” sits inside “silences”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25999, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
silence is recorded at frequency rank #1,608, classified as anoun, pronounced \si.lɑ̃s\. silences is at rank #24,391, tagged as anoun, pronounced \si.lɑ̃s\.
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 25999, this pair ranks #337,671 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of silence vs silences
Shared letters: ceilns. Private to "silence": -. Private to "silences": -.
"silence" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV · "silences" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "silence" and "silences" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "silence" or "silences" show up more?
After this comparison
"silence" and "silences" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "silence" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "silences" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #337,671 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "silence" and "silences" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "siennes vs silences". 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 #337,671 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.