congésvscontestWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#8,826
“congés” frequency rank
#39,722
“contest” frequency rank
48548
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature congés contest
Definition Pluriel de congé. Concours.

Where the eye mixes congés and contest

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

6 ch
congés
7 ch
contest

Visual trap between congés and contest

A purely visual mix-up. congés (\kɔ̃.ʒe\) and contest (\ˈkɒn.tɛst\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48548, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

congés is recorded at frequency rank #8,826, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔ̃.ʒe\. contest is at rank #39,722, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈkɒn.tɛst\.

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 48548, this pair ranks #178,050 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of congés vs contest

Shared letters: cnos. Private to "congés": . Private to "contest": et.

"congés" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "contest" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • contestccontest · cnotest · conetst · conntest · contesst · contestt · contets · contset

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "congés" and "contest" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\kɔ̃.ʒe\ versus \ˈkɒn.tɛst\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "congés" or "contest"?
"congés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,826 in our French list, against #39,722 for "contest". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "congés" and "contest" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "congés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "contest" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #178,050 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "congés" and "contest" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "contest vs context". 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 #178,050 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