Which to use
“travaux” is a noun and “tribaux” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #641
- “travaux” frequency rank
- #48,240
- “tribaux” frequency rank
- 48881
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | travaux | tribaux |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pluriel de travail : Suite d’études, d’opérations, d’entreprises, pour élaborer, construire, édifier, quelque chose. | Masculin pluriel de tribal. |
Where the eye mixes travaux and tribaux
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. travaux and tribaux follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: travaux vs tribaux
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: travaux is \tʁa.vo\ while tribaux is \tʁi.bo\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48881, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
travaux is recorded at frequency rank #641, classified as anoun, pronounced \tʁa.vo\. tribaux is at rank #48,240, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tʁi.bo\.
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 48881, this pair ranks #175,297 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of travaux vs tribaux
Shared letters: artux. Private to "travaux": v. Private to "tribaux": bi.
"travaux" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC · "tribaux" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "travaux" for "tribaux" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "travaux" or "tribaux" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "travaux" and "tribaux" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "travaux" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "tribaux" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #175,297 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "travaux" and "tribaux" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Thibaud vs tribaux". 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 #175,297 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.