creusévscreuséeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#11,749
“creusé” frequency rank
#28,504
“creusée” frequency rank
40253
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature creusé creusée
Definition (En parlant du visage ou de parties du visage) Empreint de creux, émacié. Féminin singulier de creusé.

Same sound, different letters: creusé vs creusée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. creusé runs 6 letters (CCVVCV) against creusée's 7 (CCVVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
creusé
7 ch
creusée

Ear matches; page differs - creusé and creusée

This is the hard kind. creusé and creusée are pronounced identically (\kʁø.ze\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “creusé” sits inside “creusée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40253, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

creusé is recorded at frequency rank #11,749, classified as anadj, pronounced \kʁø.ze\. creusée is at rank #28,504, tagged as anadj, pronounced \kʁø.ze\.

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 40253, this pair ranks #241,865 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of creusé vs creusée

Shared letters: cersué. Private to "creusé": -. Private to "creusée": -.

"creusé" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV  ·  "creusée" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "creusé" and "creusée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\kʁø.ze\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "creusé" vs "creusée" - which ranks higher?
"creusé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,749 in our French list, against #28,504 for "creusée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "creusé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "creusée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #241,865 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "creusé" and "creusée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "creusée vs creusot". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #241,865 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