appuyéesvsappuyerWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#34,416
“appuyées” frequency rank
#4,546
“appuyer” frequency rank
38962
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appuyées appuyer
Definition Féminin pluriel de appuyé. Placer contre quelque chose.

Same sound, different letters: appuyées vs appuyer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. appuyées runs 8 letters (VCCVVVVC) against appuyer's 7 (VCCVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
appuyées
7 ch
appuyer

Ear matches; page differs - appuyées and appuyer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: appuyées and appuyer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.pɥi.je\. 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 38962, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appuyées is recorded at frequency rank #34,416, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.pɥi.je\. appuyer is at rank #4,546, tagged as averb, 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 38962, this pair ranks #251,552 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of appuyées vs appuyer

Shared letters: aepuy. Private to "appuyées": sé. Private to "appuyer": r.

"appuyées" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVVC  ·  "appuyer" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • appuyer ← appueyr · appuyerr · appuyre · appuyyer · appyuer · apupyer · apuyer · papuyer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appuyées" for "appuyer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "appuyées" is an adjective and "appuyer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "appuyées" or "appuyer" show up more?
"appuyer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,546 in our French list, against #34,416 for "appuyées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

"appuyées" and "appuyer" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "appuyées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appuyer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #251,552 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appuyées" and "appuyer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appuies vs appuyées". 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 #251,552 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