défilévsdépitéWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: défilé is a noun, dépité is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#6,498
“défilé” frequency rank
#35,482
“dépité” frequency rank
41980
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature défilé dépité
Definition Passage étroit où il ne peut passer que peu de personnes de front. Qui éprouve du dépit.

Where the eye mixes défilé and dépité

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. défilé and dépité follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
défilé
6 ch
dépité

Look-alike desk: défilé vs dépité

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: défilé is \de.fi.le\ while dépité is \de.pi.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41980, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

défilé is recorded at frequency rank #6,498, classified as anoun, pronounced \de.fi.le\. dépité is at rank #35,482, tagged as anadj, pronounced \de.pi.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 41980, this pair ranks #229,096 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of défilé vs dépité

Shared letters: dié. Private to "défilé": fl. Private to "dépité": pt.

"défilé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "dépité" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "défilé" and "dépité" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "défilé" is a noun and "dépité" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "défilé" or "dépité"?
"défilé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,498 in our French list, against #35,482 for "dépité". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "défilé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dépité" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #229,096 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "défilé" and "dépité" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "déduite vs dépité". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #229,096 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