yearvsyesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#17,594
“year” frequency rank
#9,417
“yes” frequency rank
27011
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature year yes
Definition Année, durée de 365 jours correspondant à une révolution de la Terre autour du Soleil. Oui d’un anglophone ou d’un pays anglophone.

Where the eye mixes year and yes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
year
3 ch
yes

Why the eye confuses year with yes

A purely visual mix-up. year (\jɪə\) and yes (\jɛs\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27011, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

year is recorded at frequency rank #17,594, classified as anoun, pronounced \jɪə\. yes is at rank #9,417, tagged as anoun, pronounced \jɛs\.

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 27011, this pair ranks #331,547 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of year vs yes

Shared letters: ey. Private to "year": ar. Private to "yes": s.

"year" · 4 letters · shape VVVC  ·  "yes" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • yeareyar · yaer · yearr · yera · yyear

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "year" for "yes" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\jɪə\ versus \jɛs\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "year" vs "yes" - which ranks higher?
"yes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,417 in our French list, against #17,594 for "year". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "year" and "yes" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "year" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "yes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #331,547 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "year" and "yes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "yes vs yum". 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 #331,547 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