Skip to main content

Confidant or confidante?

confidant is a noun meaning “A person in whom one can confide or share one's secrets: a friend”; confidante is a noun meaning “A female confidant”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) confidant is about 2.2 times as common as confidante.

confidantorconfidante

What is the difference between confidant and confidante?

confidantconfidante
Part of speechnounnoun
Meaning

A person in whom one can confide or share one's secrets: a friend

A female confidant

A type of settee having a seat at each end at right angles to the main seats

Examplenone recordedGo to the docks tonight. There a blonde confidante will be waiting for you
Formsconfidantsconfidantes
Pronunciation/ˈkɑn.fɪ.dɑnt/ /ˌkɒn.fɪˈdænt/ /ˈkɒn.fɪˌdænt//ˈkɑn.fɪ.dɑnt/
In writingabout once in every 1 million wordsabout once in every 3 million words

Sources: confidant and confidante in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Every current meaning of confidant and confidante

confidant

  1. 1

    noun A person in whom one can confide or share one's secrets: a friend

confidante

  1. 1

    noun A female confidant

    Go to the docks tonight. There a blonde confidante will be waiting for you

  2. 2

    noun A type of settee having a seat at each end at right angles to the main seats

Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.

Which is more common, confidant or confidante?

confidant appears about once in every 1 million words; confidante about once in every 3 million words.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How many people search confidant vs confidante?

“confidant vs confidante” is searched about 880 times a month on Google and 130 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“confidante vs confidant”, “confidant or confidante”).

Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.

The words