beautévsbeautyWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,469
“beauté” frequency rank
#20,644
“beauty” frequency rank
22113
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature beauté beauty
Definition Qualité de ce qui est beau, de ce qui est esthétique à la perception. Beauté.

Where the eye mixes beauté and beauty

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. beauté and beauty follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
beauté
6 ch
beauty

Why the eye confuses beauté with beauty

A purely visual mix-up. beauté (\bo.te\) and beauty (\ˈbjuː.ti\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - é in “beauté” becomes y in “beauty”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22113, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

beauté is recorded at frequency rank #1,469, classified as anoun, pronounced \bo.te\. beauty is at rank #20,644, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈbjuː.ti\.

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 22113, this pair ranks #359,758 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of beauté vs beauty

Shared letters: abetu. Private to "beauté": é. Private to "beauty": y.

"beauté" · 6 letters · shape CVVVCV  ·  "beauty" · 6 letters · shape CVVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • beauty ← baeuty · bbeauty · beatuy · beautty · beautyy · beauyt · beuaty · ebauty

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "beauté" and "beauty" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\bo.te\ versus \ˈbjuː.ti\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "beauté" vs "beauty" - which ranks higher?
"beauté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,469 in our French list, against #20,644 for "beauty". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "beauté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "beauty" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #359,758 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "beauté" and "beauty" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "béant vs beauty". 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 #359,758 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