taresvstôlesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#43,689
“tares” frequency rank
#36,633
“tôles” frequency rank
80322
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tares tôles
Definition Pluriel de tare. Pluriel de tôle.

Where the eye mixes tares and tôles

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. tares and tôles follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
tares
5 ch
tôles

Look-alike desk: tares vs tôles

A purely visual mix-up. tares (\taʁ\) and tôles (\tol\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80322, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tares is recorded at frequency rank #43,689, classified as anoun, pronounced \taʁ\. tôles is at rank #36,633, tagged as anoun, pronounced \tol\.

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 80322, this pair ranks #21,233 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tares vs tôles

Shared letters: est. Private to "tares": ar. Private to "tôles": lô.

"tares" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "tôles" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tares ← atres · taers · taress · tarres · traes · ttares

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "tares" for "tôles" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\taʁ\ versus \tol\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "tares" or "tôles"?
"tôles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,633 in our French list, against #43,689 for "tares". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tares" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tôles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,233 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tares" and "tôles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tares vs tories". 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 #21,233 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