actesvsartusWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: actes is a noun, artus is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“actes” is a noun and “artus” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,552
“actes” frequency rank
#40,127
“artus” frequency rank
41679
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature actes artus
Definition Pluriel de acte. Étroit, serré.

Letter map: actes vs artus

Shared letters muted; letters that set actes and artus apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. actes and artus follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
actes
5 ch
artus

Role in the sentence - actes and artus

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: actes is anoun and artusanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41679, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

actes is recorded at frequency rank #1,552, classified as anoun, pronounced \akt\. artus is at rank #40,127, tagged as anadj.

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 41679, this pair ranks #231,285 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of actes vs artus

Shared letters: ast. Private to "actes": ce. Private to "artus": ru.

"actes" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "artus" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • actes ← acctes · acets · actess · actse · acttes · atces · cates
  • artus ← arrtus · artsu · arttus · artuss · aruts · atrus · ratus

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "actes" and "artus" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "actes" is a noun and "artus" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "actes" or "artus" show up more?
"actes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,552 in our French list, against #40,127 for "artus". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "actes" vs "artus" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "actes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "artus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #231,285 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "actes" and "artus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "arti vs artus". 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 #231,285 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