Which to use
“affect” and “affects” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #37,638
- “affect” frequency rank
- #48,899
- “affects” frequency rank
- 86537
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | affect | affects |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Disposition affective élémentaire : humeur, émotion, sentiment, motivation, passion. | Pluriel de affect. |
Same sound, different letters: affect vs affects
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - affect and affects
This is the hard kind. affect and affects are pronounced identically (\a.fɛkt\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “affect” sits inside “affects”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 86537, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
affect is recorded at frequency rank #37,638, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.fɛkt\. affects is at rank #48,899, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.fɛkt\.
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 86537, this pair ranks #9,568 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of affect vs affects
Shared letters: aceft. Private to "affect": -. Private to "affects": s.
"affect" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC · "affects" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "affect" and "affects" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "affect" vs "affects" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "affect" / "affects". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "affect" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "affects" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #9,568 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "affect" and "affects" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affectifs vs affects". 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 #9,568 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.