appliquéesvsappliquerWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: appliquées is a adjective, appliquer is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“appliquées” is an adjective and “appliquer” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,957
“appliquées” frequency rank
#2,702
“appliquer” frequency rank
12659
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appliquées appliquer
Definition Féminin pluriel de appliqué. Mettre une chose sur une autre, soit pour qu’elle y demeure adhérente, soit pour qu’elle y laisse une empreinte, soit simplement pour qu’elle y touche.

Same sound, different letters: appliquées vs appliquer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. appliquées runs 10 letters (VCCCVCVVVC) against appliquer's 9 (VCCCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

10 ch
appliquées
9 ch
appliquer

Same sound, different spelling - appliquées / appliquer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: appliquées and appliquer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.pli.ke\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12659, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appliquées is recorded at frequency rank #9,957, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.pli.ke\. appliquer is at rank #2,702, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.pli.ke\.

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 12659, this pair ranks #404,348 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of appliquées vs appliquer

Shared letters: aeilpqu. Private to "appliquées": . Private to "appliquer": r.

"appliquées" · 10 letters · shape VCCCVCVVVC  ·  "appliquer" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • appliquerapliquer · aplpiquer · appilquer · appliqeur · appliqquer · appliquerr · appliqure · appliuqer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appliquées" for "appliquer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "appliquées" is an adjective and "appliquer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "appliquées" or "appliquer"?
"appliquer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,702 in our French list, against #9,957 for "appliquées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "appliquées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appliquer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #404,348 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appliquées" and "appliquer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appliquées vs appliquons". 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 #404,348 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