adoptéevsadoptéesTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#5,830
“adoptée” frequency rank
#15,296
“adoptées” frequency rank
21126
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature adoptée adoptées
Definition Femme adoptée. Féminin pluriel de adopté.

Same sound, different letters: adoptée vs adoptées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. adoptée runs 7 letters (VCVCCVV) against adoptées's 8 (VCVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
adoptée
8 ch
adoptées

Homophone desk: adoptée vs adoptées

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: adoptée and adoptées carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.dɔp.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “adoptée” sits inside “adoptées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21126, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

adoptée is recorded at frequency rank #5,830, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.dɔp.te\. adoptées is at rank #15,296, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.dɔp.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 21126, this pair ranks #364,717 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of adoptée vs adoptées

Shared letters: adeopté. Private to "adoptée": -. Private to "adoptées": s.

"adoptée" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV  ·  "adoptées" · 8 letters · shape VCVCCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "adoptée" and "adoptées" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "adoptée" is a noun and "adoptées" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "adoptée" or "adoptées" show up more?
"adoptée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,830 in our French list, against #15,296 for "adoptées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "adoptée" / "adoptées". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "adoptée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adoptées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #364,717 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "adoptée" and "adoptées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adoptées vs adoptera". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #364,717 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