agitévsaitWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#14,594
“agité” frequency rank
#538
“ait” frequency rank
15132
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature agité ait
Definition Qui est animé d’un mouvement vif et irrégulier. Troisième personne du singulier du subjonctif présent du verbe auxiliaire avoir.

Where the eye mixes agité and ait

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
agité
3 ch
ait

Visual trap between agité and ait

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: agité is \a.ʒi.te\ while ait is \ɛ\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15132, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

agité is recorded at frequency rank #14,594, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.ʒi.te\. ait is at rank #538, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɛ\.

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 15132, this pair ranks #393,720 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of agité vs ait

Shared letters: ait. Private to "agité": . Private to "ait": -.

"agité" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "ait" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "agité" and "ait" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "agité" is an adjective and "ait" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "agité" or "ait" show up more?
"ait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #538 in our French list, against #14,594 for "agité". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "agité" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ait" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #393,720 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "agité" and "ait" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "agité vs alizé". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #393,720 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