agitvsaltTell them apart

Quick tell: agit is a verb, alt is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#432
“agit” frequency rank
#15,561
“alt” frequency rank
15993
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature agit alt
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de agir. Vieux, vieille, âgé, âgée.

Where the eye mixes agit and alt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
agit
3 ch
alt

Why the eye confuses agit with alt

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: agit is \a.ʒi\ while alt is \alt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15993, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

agit is recorded at frequency rank #432, classified as averb, pronounced \a.ʒi\. alt is at rank #15,561, tagged as anadj, pronounced \alt\.

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 15993, this pair ranks #389,891 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of agit vs alt

Shared letters: at. Private to "agit": gi. Private to "alt": l.

"agit" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "alt" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • agitaggit · agitt · agti · aigt · gait

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "agit" and "alt" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "agit" is a verb and "alt" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "agit" or "alt" show up more?
"agit" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #432 in our French list, against #15,561 for "alt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "agit" and "alt" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "agit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "alt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #389,891 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "agit" and "alt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alt vs aur". 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 #389,891 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