actevsaeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#1,353
“acte” frequency rank
#20,911
“ae” frequency rank
22264
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acte ae
Definition Résultat d’une action, opération accomplie. Graine.

Letter map: acte vs ae

Shared letters muted; letters that set acte and ae apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
acte
2 ch
ae

Corpus notes: acte and ae

acte and ae are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22264, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

acte is recorded at frequency rank #1,353, classified as anoun, pronounced \akt\. ae is at rank #20,911, tagged as anoun.

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 22264, this pair ranks #358,947 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of acte vs ae

Shared letters: ae. Private to "acte": ct. Private to "ae": -.

"acte" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "ae" · 2 letters · shape VV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acteaccte · acet · actte · atce · cate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "acte" for "ae" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "acte" or "ae"?
"acte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,353 in our French list, against #20,911 for "ae". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "acte" vs "ae" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "acte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ae" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #358,947 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acte" and "ae" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ae vs aves". 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 #358,947 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