craignaient vs craignais

Which to use

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

#28,120
“craignaient” frequency rank: #30,548
“craignais” frequency rank: 58668
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	craignaient	craignais
Definition	Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de craindre.	Première personne du singulier de l’imparfait de craindre.

Same sound, different letters: craignaient vs craignais

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. craignaient runs 11 letters (CCVVCCVVVCC) against craignais's 9 (CCVVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

11 ch

craignaient

9 ch

craignais

Ear matches; page differs - craignaient and craignais

This is the hard kind. craignaient and craignais are pronounced identically (\kʁɛ.ɲɛ\) 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 differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58668, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

craignaient is recorded at frequency rank #28,120, classified as averb, pronounced \kʁɛ.ɲɛ\. craignais is at rank #30,548, tagged as averb, pronounced \kʁɛ.ɲɛ\.

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 58668, this pair ranks #107,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of craignaient vs craignais

Shared letters: acginr. Private to "craignaient": et. Private to "craignais": s.

"craignaient" · 11 letters · shape CCVVCCVVVCC · "craignais" · 9 letters · shape CCVVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

craignaient ← carignaient · ccraignaient · craginaient · craiganient · craiggnaient · craignaeint · craignaiennt · craignaientt
craignais ← carignais · ccraignais · craginais · craiganis · craiggnais · craignaiss · craignasi · craignias

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "craignaient" and "craignais" be used interchangeably?

No. They are pronounced the same (\kʁɛ.ɲɛ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

Frequency check: "craignaient" vs "craignais" - which ranks higher?

"craignaient" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,120 in our French list, against #30,548 for "craignais". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"craignaient" and "craignais" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

Full dictionary entry for "craignaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "craignais" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #107,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"craignaient" and "craignais" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "craignais vs craignons". 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 #107,652 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.