abrégéevsabrégerWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: abrégée is a adjective, abréger is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“abrégée” is an adjective and “abréger” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,801
“abrégée” frequency rank
#35,792
“abréger” frequency rank
67593
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature abrégée abréger
Definition Féminin singulier de abrégé. Rendre plus court.

Same sound, different letters: abrégée vs abréger

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
abrégée
7 ch
abréger

Ear matches; page differs - abrégée and abréger

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: abrégée and abréger carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.bʁe.ʒe\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67593, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

abrégée is recorded at frequency rank #31,801, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.bʁe.ʒe\. abréger is at rank #35,792, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.bʁe.ʒe\.

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 67593, this pair ranks #62,752 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of abrégée vs abréger

Shared letters: abegré. Private to "abrégée": -. Private to "abréger": -.

"abrégée" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVV  ·  "abréger" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "abrégée" for "abréger" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "abrégée" is an adjective and "abréger" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "abrégée" or "abréger" show up more?
"abrégée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,801 in our French list, against #35,792 for "abréger". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've separated the homophone pair "abrégée" / "abréger". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "abrégée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "abréger" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,752 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "abrégée" and "abréger" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "abréger vs agrégés". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #62,752 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