adaptevsadaptéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: adapte is a verb, adaptée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“adapte” is a verb and “adaptée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,269
“adapte” frequency rank
#6,921
“adaptée” frequency rank
17190
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature adapte adaptée
Definition Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent du verbe adapter. Féminin singulier de adapté.

Where the eye mixes adapte and adaptée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

6 ch
adapte
7 ch
adaptée

Look-alike desk: adapte vs adaptée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: adapte is \a.dapt\ while adaptée is \a.dap.te\. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17190, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

adapte is recorded at frequency rank #10,269, classified as averb, pronounced \a.dapt\. adaptée is at rank #6,921, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.dap.te\.

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 17190, this pair ranks #384,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of adapte vs adaptée

Shared letters: adept. Private to "adapte": -. Private to "adaptée": é.

"adapte" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "adaptée" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • adapteaadpte · adapet · adappte · adaptte · adatpe · addapte · adpate · daapte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "adapte" and "adaptée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "adapte" is a verb and "adaptée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "adapte" vs "adaptée" - which ranks higher?
"adaptée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,921 in our French list, against #10,269 for "adapte". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "adapte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adaptée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #384,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "adapte" and "adaptée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adapte vs adoptez". 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 #384,353 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