accessvsactesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#18,105
“access” frequency rank
#1,552
“actes” frequency rank
19657
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature access actes
Definition Accès. Pluriel de acte.

Where the eye mixes access and actes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
access
5 ch
actes

Look-alike desk: access vs actes

A purely visual mix-up. access (\ˈæk.sɛs\) and actes (\akt\) 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 19657, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

access is recorded at frequency rank #18,105, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈæk.sɛs\. actes is at rank #1,552, tagged as anoun, pronounced \akt\.

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 19657, this pair ranks #372,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of access vs actes

Shared letters: aces. Private to "access": -. Private to "actes": t.

"access" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC  ·  "actes" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • accessaccses · acecss · acess · cacess
  • actesacctes · acets · actess · actse · acttes · atces · cates

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "access" and "actes" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ˈæk.sɛs\ versus \akt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "access" or "actes"?
"actes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,552 in our French list, against #18,105 for "access". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "access" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "actes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #372,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "access" and "actes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "access vs across". 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 #372,191 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