Which to use
“appela” and “appelais” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #23,762
- “appela” frequency rank
- #29,637
- “appelais” frequency rank
- 53399
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | appela | appelais |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe appeler. | Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe appeler. |
Where the eye mixes appela and appelais
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. appela runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against appelais's 8 (VCCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between appela and appelais
A purely visual mix-up. appela (\a.pə.la\) and appelais (\a.pə.lɛ\) 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 2 extra letter(s) - “appela” sits inside “appelais”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53399, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
appela is recorded at frequency rank #23,762, classified as averb, pronounced \a.pə.la\. appelais is at rank #29,637, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.pə.lɛ\.
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 53399, this pair ranks #140,987 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of appela vs appelais
Shared letters: aelp. Private to "appela": -. Private to "appelais": is.
"appela" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV · "appelais" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "appela" and "appelais" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "appela" or "appelais" show up more?
What to do next
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "appela" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "appelais" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #140,987 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "appela" and "appelais" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appelais vs apprêtais". 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 #140,987 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.