communiquévscommuniquéeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#3,524
“communiqué” frequency rank
#25,938
“communiquée” frequency rank
29462
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature communiqué communiquée
Definition Message à la presse. Participe passé féminin singulier de communiquer.

Same sound, different letters: communiqué vs communiquée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 10 letters. communiqué runs 10 letters (CVCCVCVCVV) against communiquée's 11 (CVCCVCVCVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

10 ch
communiqué
11 ch
communiquée

Same sound, different spelling - communiqué / communiquée

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: communiqué and communiquée carry the same recorded pronunciation, \kɔ.my.ni.ke\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “communiqué” sits inside “communiquée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29462, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

communiqué is recorded at frequency rank #3,524, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.my.ni.ke\. communiquée is at rank #25,938, tagged as averb, pronounced \kɔ.my.ni.ke\.

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 29462, this pair ranks #316,516 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of communiqué vs communiquée

Shared letters: cimnoqué. Private to "communiqué": -. Private to "communiquée": e.

"communiqué" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCVCVV  ·  "communiquée" · 11 letters · shape CVCCVCVCVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "communiqué" for "communiquée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "communiqué" is a noun and "communiquée" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "communiqué" or "communiquée" show up more?
"communiqué" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,524 in our French list, against #25,938 for "communiquée". 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 "communiqué" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "communiquée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #316,516 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "communiqué" and "communiquée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "communiquée vs communiquées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #316,516 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