antiquevsattaqueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: antique is a adjective, attaque is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#5,630
“antique” frequency rank
#957
“attaque” frequency rank
6587
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature antique attaque
Definition Ayant existé dans l’antiquité. Action violente, agression.

Where the eye mixes antique and attaque

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. antique and attaque follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
antique
7 ch
attaque

Visual trap between antique and attaque

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: antique is \ɑ̃.tik\ while attaque is \a.tak\. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6587, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

antique is recorded at frequency rank #5,630, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.tik\. attaque is at rank #957, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.tak\.

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 6587, this pair ranks #425,818 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of antique vs attaque

Shared letters: aeqtu. Private to "antique": in. Private to "attaque": -.

"antique" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVV  ·  "attaque" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • antique ← anitque · anntique · antiqeu · antiqque · antiuqe · antqiue · anttique · atnique
  • attaque ← ataque · atatque · attaqeu · attaqque · attauqe · attqaue · tataque

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "antique" and "attaque" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "antique" is an adjective and "attaque" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "antique" or "attaque" show up more?
"attaque" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #957 in our French list, against #5,630 for "antique". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "antique" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "attaque" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #425,818 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "antique" and "attaque" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "antique vs aortique". 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 #425,818 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