Which to use
“appuya” is a verb and “appuyé” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #49,487
- “appuya” frequency rank
- #8,959
- “appuyé” frequency rank
- 58446
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | appuya | appuyé |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe appuyer. | Qui pèse sur. |
Where the eye mixes appuya and appuyé
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. appuya and appuyé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Why the eye confuses appuya with appuyé
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: appuya is \a.pɥi.ja\ while appuyé is \a.pɥi.je\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - a in “appuya” becomes é in “appuyé”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58446, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
appuya is recorded at frequency rank #49,487, classified as averb, pronounced \a.pɥi.ja\. appuyé is at rank #8,959, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.pɥi.je\.
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 58446, this pair ranks #109,041 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of appuya vs appuyé
Shared letters: apuy. Private to "appuya": -. Private to "appuyé": é.
"appuya" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV · "appuyé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- appuya ← appuay · appuyya · appyua · apupya · apuya · papuya
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "appuya" and "appuyé" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "appuya" vs "appuyé" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "appuya" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "appuyé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #109,041 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "appuya" and "appuyé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appuya vs appuyait". 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 #109,041 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.