Which to use
“volonté” and “volontés” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,193
- “volonté” frequency rank
- #16,775
- “volontés” frequency rank
- 17968
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | volonté | volontés |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Faculté de vouloir, de se déterminer à quelque chose ; en particulier, cette faculté même en tant qu’elle est plus ou moins agissante. | Pluriel de volonté. |
Same sound, different letters: volonté vs volontés
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. volonté runs 7 letters (CVCVCCV) against volontés's 8 (CVCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - volonté and volontés
This is the hard kind. volonté and volontés are pronounced identically (\vɔ.lɔ̃.te\) 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) - “volonté” sits inside “volontés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17968, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
volonté is recorded at frequency rank #1,193, classified as anoun, pronounced \vɔ.lɔ̃.te\. volontés is at rank #16,775, tagged as anoun, pronounced \vɔ.lɔ̃.te\.
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 17968, this pair ranks #380,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of volonté vs volontés
Shared letters: lnotvé. Private to "volonté": -. Private to "volontés": s.
"volonté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV · "volontés" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "volonté" and "volontés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "volonté" or "volontés" show up more?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "volonté" / "volontés". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "volonté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "volontés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #380,616 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "volonté" and "volontés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "volontés vs volutes". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #380,616 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.