vautourvsvautoursTell them apart

Which to use

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

#30,418
“vautour” frequency rank
#23,409
“vautours” frequency rank
53827
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature vautour vautours
Definition Oiseau rapace charognard, à tête et à col nus. Pluriel de vautour.

Same sound, different letters: vautour vs vautours

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. vautour runs 7 letters (CVVCVVC) against vautours's 8 (CVVCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
vautour
8 ch
vautours

Ear matches; page differs - vautour and vautours

This is the hard kind. vautour and vautours are pronounced identically (\vo.tuʁ\) and both work as anoun. 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 extra letter(s) - “vautour” sits inside “vautours”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53827, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

vautour is recorded at frequency rank #30,418, classified as anoun, pronounced \vo.tuʁ\. vautours is at rank #23,409, tagged as anoun, pronounced \vo.tuʁ\.

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 53827, this pair ranks #138,105 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of vautour vs vautours

Shared letters: aortuv. Private to "vautour": -. Private to "vautours": s.

"vautour" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVVC  ·  "vautours" · 8 letters · shape CVVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • vautour ← avutour · vatuour · vauotur · vautoru · vautourr · vauttour · vautuor · vuatour
  • vautours ← avutours · vatuours · vauoturs · vautorus · vautourrs · vautourss · vautousr · vauttours

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "vautour" for "vautours" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\vo.tuʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "vautour" or "vautours"?
"vautours" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,409 in our French list, against #30,418 for "vautour". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "vautour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "vautours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #138,105 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "vautour" and "vautours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "vaudou vs vautour". 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 #138,105 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