ampèrevsaspireWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ampère is a noun, aspire is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ampère” is a noun and “aspire” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,427
“ampère” frequency rank
#13,513
“aspire” frequency rank
58940
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ampère aspire
Definition Unité de mesure de l’intensité du courant électrique du Système international (SI, unité de base), dont le symbole est A. Équivaut à un coulomb par seconde, soit environ 6,28×10¹⁸ charges élémentaires par seconde. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent du verbe aspirer.

Where the eye mixes ampère and aspire

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. ampère and aspire follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
ampère
6 ch
aspire

Look-alike desk: ampère vs aspire

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: ampère is \ɑ̃.pɛʁ\ while aspire is \as.piʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58940, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ampère is recorded at frequency rank #45,427, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɑ̃.pɛʁ\. aspire is at rank #13,513, tagged as averb, pronounced \as.piʁ\.

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 58940, this pair ranks #106,019 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ampère vs aspire

Shared letters: aepr. Private to "ampère": . Private to "aspire": is.

"ampère" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "aspire" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • aspireapsire · asipre · aspier · aspirre · asppire · asprie · asspire · sapire

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ampère" and "aspire" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ampère" is a noun and "aspire" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ampère" or "aspire" show up more?
"aspire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,513 in our French list, against #45,427 for "ampère". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ampère" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "aspire" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #106,019 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ampère" and "aspire" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "amore vs ampère". 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 #106,019 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