accusaientvsaccusaitTell them apart

Which to use

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

#42,140
“accusaient” frequency rank
#22,753
“accusait” frequency rank
64893
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature accusaient accusait
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe accuser. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe accuser.

Same sound, different letters: accusaient vs accusait

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. accusaient runs 10 letters (VCCVCVVVCC) against accusait's 8 (VCCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

10 ch
accusaient
8 ch
accusait

Ear matches; page differs - accusaient and accusait

This is the hard kind. accusaient and accusait are pronounced identically (\a.ky.zɛ\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64893, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

accusaient is recorded at frequency rank #42,140, classified as averb, pronounced \a.ky.zɛ\. accusait is at rank #22,753, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.ky.zɛ\.

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 64893, this pair ranks #74,856 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of accusaient vs accusait

Shared letters: acistu. Private to "accusaient": en. Private to "accusait": -.

"accusaient" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCVVVCC  ·  "accusait" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • accusaient ← accsuaient · accuasient · accusaeint · accusaiennt · accusaientt · accusaietn · accusainet · accusiaent
  • accusait ← accsuait · accuasit · accusaitt · accusati · accusiat · accussait · acucsait · acusait

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "accusaient" and "accusait" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.ky.zɛ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "accusaient" or "accusait"?
"accusait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,753 in our French list, against #42,140 for "accusaient". 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 "accusaient" / "accusait". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "accusaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "accusait" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #74,856 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "accusaient" and "accusait" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "accusaient vs amusaient". 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 #74,856 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