adulévsagileWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#45,415
“adulé” frequency rank
#21,229
“agile” frequency rank
66644
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature adulé agile
Definition Qualifie une personne ou une entité flattée avec excès. Qui a des facilités pour agir ou se mouvoir, dispos, léger, souple.

Where the eye mixes adulé and agile

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. adulé and agile follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
adulé
5 ch
agile

Visual trap between adulé and agile

A purely visual mix-up. adulé (\a.dy.le\) and agile (\a.ʒil\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66644, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

adulé is recorded at frequency rank #45,415, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.dy.le\. agile is at rank #21,229, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.ʒil\.

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 66644, this pair ranks #66,938 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of adulé vs agile

Shared letters: al. Private to "adulé": dué. Private to "agile": egi.

"adulé" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "agile" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • agile ← aggile · agiel · agille · aglie · gaile

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "adulé" and "agile" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\a.dy.le\ versus \a.ʒil\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "adulé" vs "agile" - which ranks higher?
"agile" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,229 in our French list, against #45,415 for "adulé". 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 "adulé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "agile" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #66,938 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "adulé" and "agile" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adulé vs Aure". 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 #66,938 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