captivévscaptureWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: captivé is a verb, capture is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“captivé” is a verb and “capture” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,207
“captivé” frequency rank
#6,793
“capture” frequency rank
54000
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captivé capture
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe captiver. Action de capturer ou résultat de cette action.

Where the eye mixes captivé and capture

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

7 ch
captivé
7 ch
capture

Why the eye confuses captivé with capture

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: captivé is \kap.ti.ve\ while capture is \kap.tyʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54000, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

captivé is recorded at frequency rank #47,207, classified as averb, pronounced \kap.ti.ve\. capture is at rank #6,793, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kap.tyʁ\.

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 54000, this pair ranks #136,975 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of captivé vs capture

Shared letters: acpt. Private to "captivé": ivé. Private to "capture": eru.

"captivé" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "capture" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • captureacpture · cappture · captrue · captture · captuer · capturre · caputre · catpure

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "captivé" and "capture" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "captivé" is a verb and "capture" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "captivé" or "capture" show up more?
"capture" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,793 in our French list, against #47,207 for "captivé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "captivé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "capture" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #136,975 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captivé" and "capture" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "captage vs captivé". 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 #136,975 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