Which to use
“telle” and “tels” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #988
- “telle” frequency rank
- #1,303
- “tels” frequency rank
- 2291
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | telle | tels |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Féminin singulier de tel. | Masculin pluriel de tel. |
Same sound, different letters: telle vs tels
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.
Homophone desk: telle vs tels
This is the hard kind. telle and tels are pronounced identically (\tɛl\) and both work as anadjective. 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2291, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
telle is recorded at frequency rank #988, classified as anadj, pronounced \tɛl\. tels is at rank #1,303, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tɛl\.
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 2291, this pair ranks #436,416 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of telle vs tels
Shared letters: elt. Private to "telle": -. Private to "tels": s.
"telle" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "tels" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "telle" and "tels" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "telle" vs "tels" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
"telle" and "tels" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "telle" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "tels" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #436,416 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "telle" and "tels" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "telle vs truelle". 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 #436,416 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.