contactéevscontacterWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#24,920
“contactée” frequency rank
#4,740
“contacter” frequency rank
29660
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature contactée contacter
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de contacter. Entrer en contact, en relation avec.

Same sound, different letters: contactée vs contacter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters.

9 ch
contactée
9 ch
contacter

Ear matches; page differs - contactée and contacter

This is the hard kind. contactée and contacter are pronounced identically (\kɔ̃.tak.te\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29660, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

contactée is recorded at frequency rank #24,920, classified as averb, pronounced \kɔ̃.tak.te\. contacter is at rank #4,740, tagged as averb, pronounced \kɔ̃.tak.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 29660, this pair ranks #315,287 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of contactée vs contacter

Shared letters: acenot. Private to "contactée": é. Private to "contacter": r.

"contactée" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCCVV  ·  "contacter" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • contacterccontacter · cnotacter · conatcter · conntacter · contaccter · contacetr · contacterr · contactre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "contactée" and "contacter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\kɔ̃.tak.te\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "contactée" vs "contacter" - which ranks higher?
"contacter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,740 in our French list, against #24,920 for "contactée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "contactée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "contacter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #315,287 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "contactée" and "contacter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "contactée vs contentée". 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 #315,287 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