affilévsaffiliéeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: affilé is a adjective, affiliée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“affilé” is an adjective and “affiliée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,560
“affilé” frequency rank
#34,395
“affiliée” frequency rank
80955
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affilé affiliée
Definition Qui a le tranchant fin, aiguisé. Participante à une affiliation.

Where the eye mixes affilé and affiliée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. affilé runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against affiliée's 8 (VCCVCVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
affilé
8 ch
affiliée

Look-alike desk: affilé vs affiliée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: affilé is \a.fi.le\ while affiliée is \a.fi.lje\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80955, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

affilé is recorded at frequency rank #46,560, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.fi.le\. affiliée is at rank #34,395, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.fi.lje\.

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 80955, this pair ranks #19,779 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of affilé vs affiliée

Shared letters: afilé. Private to "affilé": -. Private to "affiliée": e.

"affilé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "affiliée" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "affilé" for "affiliée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "affilé" is an adjective and "affiliée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "affilé" or "affiliée" show up more?
"affiliée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,395 in our French list, against #46,560 for "affilé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "affilé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "affiliée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,779 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affilé" and "affiliée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affable vs affilé". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #19,779 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