affectévsaffecterWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: affecté is a adjective, affecter is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#6,361
“affecté” frequency rank
#10,111
“affecter” frequency rank
16472
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affecté affecter
Definition Qui a de l’affectation, qui manque de naturel. Destiner et appliquer une chose ou une personne à un certain usage.

Same sound, different letters: affecté vs affecter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
affecté
8 ch
affecter

Ear matches; page differs - affecté and affecter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: affecté and affecter carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.fɛk.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16472, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

affecté is recorded at frequency rank #6,361, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.fɛk.te\. affecter is at rank #10,111, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.fɛk.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 16472, this pair ranks #387,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of affecté vs affecter

Shared letters: aceft. Private to "affecté": é. Private to "affecter": r.

"affecté" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCV  ·  "affecter" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • affecterafecter · afefcter · affceter · affeccter · affecetr · affecterr · affectre · affectter

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "affecté" and "affecter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "affecté" is an adjective and "affecter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "affecté" or "affecter" show up more?
"affecté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,361 in our French list, against #10,111 for "affecter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "affecté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "affecter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #387,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affecté" and "affecter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affecter 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 #387,684 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