appâtvsappâtsWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“appât” and “appâts” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#21,239
“appât” frequency rank
#46,579
“appâts” frequency rank
67818
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appât appâts
Definition Pâture qu’on met soit à des pièges, pour attirer des quadrupèdes ou des oiseaux, soit à des hameçons, pour pêcher des poissons. Pluriel de appât.

Where the eye mixes appât and appâts

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

5 ch
appât
6 ch
appâts

Look-alike desk: appât vs appâts

A purely visual mix-up. appât (\a.pɑ\) and appâts (\a.pa\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “appât” sits inside “appâts”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67818, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appât is recorded at frequency rank #21,239, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.pɑ\. appâts is at rank #46,579, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.pa\.

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 67818, this pair ranks #61,781 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of appât vs appâts

Shared letters: aptâ. Private to "appât": -. Private to "appâts": s.

"appât" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "appâts" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appât" for "appâts" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\a.pɑ\ versus \a.pa\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "appât" vs "appâts" - which ranks higher?
"appât" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,239 in our French list, against #46,579 for "appâts". 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 "appât" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appâts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #61,781 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appât" and "appâts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aplati vs appâts". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #61,781 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