travailvsTravisConfusable pair

Quick tell: travail is a noun, Travis is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“travail” is a noun and “Travis” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#194
“travail” frequency rank
#15,527
“Travis” frequency rank
15721
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature travail Travis
Definition Labeur, application à une tâche, effort soutenu pour faire quelque chose, en parlant de l’esprit comme du corps. Nom de famille.

Letter map: travail vs Travis

Shared letters muted; letters that set travail and Travis apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. travail runs 7 letters (CCVCVVC) against Travis's 6 (CCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
travail
6 ch
Travis

Grammar separator: travail vs Travis

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: travail is anoun and Travisaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15721, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

travail is recorded at frequency rank #194, classified as anoun, pronounced \tʁa.vaj\. Travis is at rank #15,527, tagged as aname.

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 15721, this pair ranks #391,113 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of travail vs Travis

Shared letters: airtv. Private to "travail": l. Private to "Travis": s.

"travail" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC  ·  "Travis" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • travail ← rtavail · tarvail · traavil · travaill · travali · travial · travvail · trravail
  • Travis ← rtavis · tarvis · traivs · traviss · travsi · travvis · trravis · trvais

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "travail" and "Travis" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "travail" is a noun and "Travis" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "travail" or "Travis" show up more?
"travail" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #194 in our French list, against #15,527 for "Travis". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "travail" vs "Travis" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "travail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Travis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #391,113 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "travail" and "Travis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Travis vs Trévise". 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 #391,113 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