achevavsacheverWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#37,148
“acheva” frequency rank
#8,953
“achever” frequency rank
46101
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acheva achever
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe achever. Finir une chose commencée.

Where the eye mixes acheva and achever

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. acheva runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against achever's 7 (VCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
acheva
7 ch
achever

Why the eye confuses acheva with achever

A purely visual mix-up. acheva (\a.ʃə.va\) and achever (\a.ʃə.ve\) 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 46101, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

acheva is recorded at frequency rank #37,148, classified as averb, pronounced \a.ʃə.va\. achever is at rank #8,953, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.ʃə.ve\.

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 46101, this pair ranks #197,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of acheva vs achever

Shared letters: acehv. Private to "acheva": -. Private to "achever": r.

"acheva" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "achever" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acheva ← accheva · acehva · acheav · achevva · achheva · achvea · ahceva · caheva
  • achever ← acchever · acehver · acheevr · acheverr · achevre · achevver · achhever · achveer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "acheva" for "achever" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\a.ʃə.va\ versus \a.ʃə.ve\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "acheva" or "achever" show up more?
"achever" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,953 in our French list, against #37,148 for "acheva". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "acheva" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "achever" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #197,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acheva" and "achever" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acheva vs achevant". 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 #197,599 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