accès vs ace, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#765
“accès” frequency rank: #14,189
“ace” frequency rank: 14954
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	accès	ace
Definition	Action, endroit, ou facilité plus ou moins grande d’accéder dans un lieu, physique ou virtuel.	Service gagnant sans que l'adversaire ait touché la balle.

Where the eye mixes accès and ace

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

5 ch

accès

3 ch

ace

Why the eye confuses accès with ace

A purely visual mix-up. accès (\ak.sɛ\) and ace (\ɛs\) 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14954, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

accès is recorded at frequency rank #765, classified as anoun, pronounced \ak.sɛ\. ace is at rank #14,189, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛs\.

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 14954, this pair ranks #394,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of accès vs ace

Shared letters: ac. Private to "accès": sè. Private to "ace": e.

"accès" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC · "ace" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "accès" and "ace" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No. They are said differently (\ak.sɛ\ versus \ɛs\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.

In ordinary French text, does "accès" or "ace" show up more?

"accès" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #765 in our French list, against #14,189 for "ace". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "accès" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ace" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #394,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"accès" and "ace" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ace vs aves". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #394,497 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.