Which to use
“talc” and “talus” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #43,688
- “talc” frequency rank
- #25,508
- “talus” frequency rank
- 69196
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | talc | talus |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Minéral composé de silicate de magnésium doublement hydroxylé de la famille des phyllosilicates. | Pente, inclinaison. |
Where the eye mixes talc and talus
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. talc runs 4 letters (CVCC) against talus's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between talc and talus
A purely visual mix-up. talc (\talk\) and talus (\ta.ly\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69196, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
talc is recorded at frequency rank #43,688, classified as anoun, pronounced \talk\. talus is at rank #25,508, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ta.ly\.
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 69196, this pair ranks #56,097 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of talc vs talus
Shared letters: alt. Private to "talc": c. Private to "talus": su.
"talc" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "talus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "talc" for "talus" ever safe?
Frequency check: "talc" vs "talus" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "talc" and "talus" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "talc" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "talus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #56,097 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "talc" and "talus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tak vs talc". 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 #56,097 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.