actavsavaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: acta is a verb, ava is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“acta” is a verb and “ava” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,310
“acta” frequency rank
#19,748
“ava” frequency rank
47058
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acta ava
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe acter. Kava.

Where the eye mixes acta and ava

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

4 ch
acta
3 ch
ava

Look-alike desk: acta vs ava

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: acta is \ak.ta\ while ava is \a.va\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47058, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

acta is recorded at frequency rank #27,310, classified as averb, pronounced \ak.ta\. ava is at rank #19,748, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.va\.

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 47058, this pair ranks #189,984 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of acta vs ava

Shared letters: a. Private to "acta": ct. Private to "ava": v.

"acta" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "ava" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • actaacat · accta · actta · atca

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "acta" and "ava" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "acta" is a verb and "ava" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "acta" or "ava" show up more?
"ava" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,748 in our French list, against #27,310 for "acta". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "acta" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ava" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #189,984 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acta" and "ava" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acta vs arti". 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 #189,984 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