affectéevsaffectéesTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#12,296
“affectée” frequency rank
#15,793
“affectées” frequency rank
28089
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affectée affectées
Definition Féminin singulier de affecté. Participe passé féminin pluriel du verbe affecter.

Same sound, different letters: affectée vs affectées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. affectée runs 8 letters (VCCVCCVV) against affectées's 9 (VCCVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
affectée
9 ch
affectées

Homophone desk: affectée vs affectées

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: affectée and affectées 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 extra letter(s) - “affectée” sits inside “affectées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28089, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

affectée is recorded at frequency rank #12,296, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.fɛk.te\. affectées is at rank #15,793, 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 28089, this pair ranks #324,988 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of affectée vs affectées

Shared letters: acefté. Private to "affectée": -. Private to "affectées": s.

"affectée" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVV  ·  "affectées" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "affectée" for "affectées" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "affectée" is an adjective and "affectées" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "affectée" vs "affectées" - which ranks higher?
"affectée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,296 in our French list, against #15,793 for "affectées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "affectée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "affectées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #324,988 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affectée" and "affectées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affectées vs affects". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #324,988 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