voiliervsvolièreWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: voilier is a adjective, volière is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“voilier” is an adjective and “volière” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,845
“voilier” frequency rank
#49,428
“volière” frequency rank
67273
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature voilier volière
Definition Bien ou mal muni de voiles. Sorte de grande cage où l’on nourrit des oiseaux pour son plaisir.

Where the eye mixes voilier and volière

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. voilier (CVVCVVC) and volière (CVCVVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
voilier
7 ch
volière

Visual trap between voilier and volière

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: voilier is \vwa.lje\ while volière is \vɔ.ljɛʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67273, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

voilier is recorded at frequency rank #17,845, classified as anadj, pronounced \vwa.lje\. volière is at rank #49,428, tagged as anoun, pronounced \vɔ.ljɛʁ\.

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 67273, this pair ranks #64,119 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of voilier vs volière

Shared letters: eilorv. Private to "voilier": -. Private to "volière": è.

"voilier" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVVC  ·  "volière" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • voilier ← ovilier · violier · voiiler · voileir · voilierr · voilire · voillier · voliier

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "voilier" for "volière" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "voilier" is an adjective and "volière" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "voilier" vs "volière" - which ranks higher?
"voilier" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,845 in our French list, against #49,428 for "volière". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "voilier" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "volière" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #64,119 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "voilier" and "volière" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "visière vs volière". 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 #64,119 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