appelavsappeléeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#23,762
“appela” frequency rank
#3,314
“appelée” frequency rank
27076
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appela appelée
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe appeler. Participe passé féminin singulier du verbe appeler.

Where the eye mixes appela and appelée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. appela runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against appelée's 7 (VCCVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
appela
7 ch
appelée

Visual trap between appela and appelée

A purely visual mix-up. appela (\a.pə.la\) and appelée (\a.pə.le\) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27076, 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\. appelée is at rank #3,314, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.pə.le\.

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 27076, this pair ranks #331,221 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of appela vs appelée

Shared letters: aelp. Private to "appela": -. Private to "appelée": é.

"appela" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "appelée" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • appela ← apela · apepla · appella · applea · papela

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appela" for "appelée" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\a.pə.la\ versus \a.pə.le\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "appela" or "appelée" show up more?
"appelée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,314 in our French list, against #23,762 for "appela". 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 "appela" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appelée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #331,221 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appela" and "appelée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appela vs appuya". 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 #331,221 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