appuyévsappuyéeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#8,959
“appuyé” frequency rank
#17,620
“appuyée” frequency rank
26579
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appuyé appuyée
Definition Qui pèse sur. Féminin singulier de appuyé.

Same sound, different letters: appuyé vs appuyée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. appuyé runs 6 letters (VCCVVV) against appuyée's 7 (VCCVVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
appuyé
7 ch
appuyée

Same sound, different spelling - appuyé / appuyée

This is the hard kind. appuyé and appuyée are pronounced identically (\a.pɥi.je\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “appuyé” sits inside “appuyée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26579, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appuyé is recorded at frequency rank #8,959, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.pɥi.je\. appuyée is at rank #17,620, 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 26579, this pair ranks #334,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of appuyé vs appuyée

Shared letters: apuyé. Private to "appuyé": -. Private to "appuyée": e.

"appuyé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV  ·  "appuyée" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "appuyé" and "appuyée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.pɥi.je\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "appuyé" vs "appuyée" - which ranks higher?
"appuyé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,959 in our French list, against #17,620 for "appuyée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "appuyé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appuyée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #334,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appuyé" and "appuyée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appuya vs appuyée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #334,129 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