affilévsagileConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#46,560
“affilé” frequency rank
#21,229
“agile” frequency rank
67789
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature affilé agile
Definition Qui a le tranchant fin, aiguisé. Qui a des facilités pour agir ou se mouvoir, dispos, léger, souple.

Where the eye mixes affilé and agile

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. affilé runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against agile's 5 (VCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
affilé
5 ch
agile

Visual trap between affilé and agile

A purely visual mix-up. affilé (\a.fi.le\) and agile (\a.ʒil\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67789, 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\. agile is at rank #21,229, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.ʒil\.

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 67789, this pair ranks #61,926 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of affilé vs agile

Shared letters: ail. Private to "affilé": fé. Private to "agile": eg.

"affilé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "agile" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • agile ← aggile · agiel · agille · aglie · gaile

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "affilé" for "agile" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\a.fi.le\ versus \a.ʒil\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "affilé" or "agile"?
"agile" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,229 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 "agile" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #61,926 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "affilé" and "agile" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "affable vs affilé". 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 #61,926 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