admetvsadultTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#7,023
“admet” frequency rank
#37,152
“adult” frequency rank
44175
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature admet adult
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de admettre. Adulte.

Where the eye mixes admet and adult

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. admet (VCCVC) and adult (VCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
admet
5 ch
adult

Why the eye confuses admet with adult

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: admet is \ad.mɛ\ while adult is \aˈdʊlt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44175, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

admet is recorded at frequency rank #7,023, classified as averb, pronounced \ad.mɛ\. adult is at rank #37,152, tagged as anadj, pronounced \aˈdʊlt\.

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 44175, this pair ranks #212,460 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of admet vs adult

Shared letters: adt. Private to "admet": em. Private to "adult": lu.

"admet" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "adult" · 5 letters · shape VCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • admetaddmet · ademt · admett · admmet · admte · amdet · damet
  • adultaddult · adlut · adullt · adultt · adutl · audlt · dault

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "admet" and "adult" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "admet" is a verb and "adult" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "admet" or "adult"?
"admet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,023 in our French list, against #37,152 for "adult". 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 "admet" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adult" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #212,460 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "admet" and "adult" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adulé vs adult". 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 #212,460 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