affectéesvsaffecterWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#15,793
“affectées” frequency rank
#10,111
“affecter” frequency rank
25904
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affectées affecter
Definition Participe passé féminin pluriel du verbe affecter. Destiner et appliquer une chose ou une personne à un certain usage.

Same sound, different letters: affectées vs affecter

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

9 ch
affectées
8 ch
affecter

Ear matches; page differs - affectées and affecter

This is the hard kind. affectées and affecter are pronounced identically (\a.fɛk.te\) and both work as averb. 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25904, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

affectées is recorded at frequency rank #15,793, classified as averb, 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 25904, this pair ranks #338,216 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of affectées vs affecter

Shared letters: aceft. Private to "affectées": . Private to "affecter": r.

"affectées" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCCVVC  ·  "affecter" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "affectées" for "affecter" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.fɛk.te\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "affectées" 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 #15,793 for "affectées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "affectées" 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 #338,216 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affectées" and "affecter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affectées 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 #338,216 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