agrafevsagrégéWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: agrafe is a noun, agrégé is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,312
“agrafe” frequency rank
#20,041
“agrégé” frequency rank
68353
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature agrafe agrégé
Definition Petit accessoire métallique servant à réunir deux éléments d’un même objet. Se dit des parties d’une plante agglomérées sur une petite surface.

Where the eye mixes agrafe and agrégé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. agrafe and agrégé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
agrafe
6 ch
agrégé

Why the eye confuses agrafe with agrégé

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: agrafe is \a.ɡʁaf\ while agrégé is \a.ɡʁe.ʒe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68353, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

agrafe is recorded at frequency rank #48,312, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.ɡʁaf\. agrégé is at rank #20,041, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.ɡʁe.ʒe\.

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 68353, this pair ranks #59,530 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of agrafe vs agrégé

Shared letters: agr. Private to "agrafe": ef. Private to "agrégé": é.

"agrafe" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "agrégé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • agrafe ← agarfe · aggrafe · agraef · agraffe · agrfae · agrrafe · argafe · garafe

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "agrafe" for "agrégé" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "agrafe" is a noun and "agrégé" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "agrafe" or "agrégé" show up more?
"agrégé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,041 in our French list, against #48,312 for "agrafe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "agrafe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "agrégé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,530 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "agrafe" and "agrégé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "agrafe vs agrafes". 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 #59,530 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