affectéevsaffecterTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#12,296
“affectée” frequency rank
#10,111
“affecter” frequency rank
22407
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affectée affecter
Definition Féminin singulier de affecté. Destiner et appliquer une chose ou une personne à un certain usage.

Same sound, different letters: affectée vs affecter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.

8 ch
affectée
8 ch
affecter

Ear matches; page differs - affectée and affecter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: affectée 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22407, 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\. 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 22407, this pair ranks #358,133 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of affectée vs affecter

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

"affectée" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVV  ·  "affecter" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "affectée" and "affecter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "affectée" is an adjective and "affecter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "affectée" or "affecter" show up more?
"affecter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,111 in our French list, against #12,296 for "affectée". 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 "affecter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #358,133 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affectée" and "affecter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affectée 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 #358,133 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