VailvsvailleWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: Vail is a name, vaille is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Vail” is a name and “vaille” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,512
“Vail” frequency rank
#20,883
“vaille” frequency rank
67395
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Vail vaille
Definition Station de sports d’hiver américaine située dans le comté d’Eagle dans le Colorado, Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de valoir.

Letter map: Vail vs vaille

Shared letters muted; letters that set Vail and vaille apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. Vail runs 4 letters (CVVC) against vaille's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
Vail
6 ch
vaille

Part-of-speech tell for Vail / vaille

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Vail is aname and vailleaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “Vail” sits inside “vaille”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67395, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Vail is recorded at frequency rank #46,512, classified as aname. vaille is at rank #20,883, tagged as averb, pronounced \vaj\.

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 67395, this pair ranks #63,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Vail vs vaille

Shared letters: ailv. Private to "Vail": -. Private to "vaille": e.

"Vail" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "vaille" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Vail ← avil · vaill · vali · vvail
  • vaille ← aville · vaile · vailel · valile · vialle · vvaille

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Vail" for "vaille" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Vail" is a name and "vaille" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Vail" or "vaille"?
"vaille" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,883 in our French list, against #46,512 for "Vail". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "Vail" vs "vaille" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Vail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "vaille" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Vail" and "vaille" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Vail vs viv". 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 #63,616 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