Which to use
“talon” and “talons” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #10,252
- “talon” frequency rank
- #7,906
- “talons” frequency rank
- 18158
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | talon | talons |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Partie postérieure du pied. | Pluriel de talon. |
Same sound, different letters: talon vs talons
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. talon runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against talons's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - talon and talons
This is the hard kind. talon and talons are pronounced identically (\ta.lɔ̃\) 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) - “talon” sits inside “talons”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18158, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
talon is recorded at frequency rank #10,252, classified as anoun, pronounced \ta.lɔ̃\. talons is at rank #7,906, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ta.lɔ̃\.
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 18158, this pair ranks #379,715 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of talon vs talons
Shared letters: alnot. Private to "talon": -. Private to "talons": s.
"talon" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "talons" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "talon" for "talons" ever safe?
Which is more common, "talon" or "talons"?
Useful next steps
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "talon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "talons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #379,715 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "talon" and "talons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "talon vs timon". 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 #379,715 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.