assistervsassistésConfusable pair

Quick tell: assister is a verb, assistés is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#3,894
“assister” frequency rank
#20,924
“assistés” frequency rank
24818
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature assister assistés
Definition Être présent ; être témoin ; être spectateur. Masculin pluriel de assisté.

Same sound, different letters: assister vs assistés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. assister and assistés follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
assister
8 ch
assistés

Ear matches; page differs - assister and assistés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: assister and assistés carry the same recorded pronunciation, [a.sis.te]. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24818, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

assister is recorded at frequency rank #3,894, classified as averb, pronounced [a.sis.te]. assistés is at rank #20,924, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.sis.te\.

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 24818, this pair ranks #344,430 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of assister vs assistés

Shared letters: aist. Private to "assister": er. Private to "assistés": é.

"assister" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC  ·  "assistés" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • assisterasisster · asister · assisetr · assisster · assisterr · assistre · assistter · assitser

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "assister" and "assistés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "assister" is a verb and "assistés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "assister" or "assistés" show up more?
"assister" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,894 in our French list, against #20,924 for "assistés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "assister" / "assistés". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "assister" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "assistés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #344,430 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "assister" and "assistés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "assistés vs assistez". 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 #344,430 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