damnévsdrameTell them apart

Quick tell: damné is a adjective, drame is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“damné” is an adjective and “drame” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,376
“damné” frequency rank
#3,326
“drame” frequency rank
46702
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature damné drame
Definition Qui est condamné aux peines de l’enfer, qui est puni des peines de l’enfer. Pièce de théâtre (tragique ou comique).

Where the eye mixes damné and drame

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. damné (CVCCV) and drame (CCVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
damné
5 ch
drame

Look-alike desk: damné vs drame

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: damné is \dɑ.ne\ while drame is \dʁam\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46702, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

damné is recorded at frequency rank #43,376, classified as anadj, pronounced \dɑ.ne\. drame is at rank #3,326, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁam\.

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 46702, this pair ranks #192,812 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of damné vs drame

Shared letters: adm. Private to "damné": né. Private to "drame": er.

"damné" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "drame" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • drame ← darme · ddrame · draem · dramme · drmae · drrame · rdame

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "damné" for "drame" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "damné" is an adjective and "drame" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "damné" or "drame" show up more?
"drame" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,326 in our French list, against #43,376 for "damné". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "damné" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "drame" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #192,812 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "damné" and "drame" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "damné vs damned". 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 #192,812 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