dégâtvsdonatTell them apart

Which to use

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

#24,555
“dégât” frequency rank
#39,260
“donat” frequency rank
63815
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dégât donat
Definition Dommage, détérioration amenés par un accident ou une cause violente. Dans l’ordre de Malte, laïque à qui le grand maître conférait la demi-croix pour services rendus à la religion.

Where the eye mixes dégât and donat

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. dégât and donat follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
dégât
5 ch
donat

Look-alike desk: dégât vs donat

A purely visual mix-up. dégât (\de.ɡa\) and donat (\dɔ.na\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63815, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dégât is recorded at frequency rank #24,555, classified as anoun, pronounced \de.ɡa\. donat is at rank #39,260, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dɔ.na\.

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 63815, this pair ranks #80,077 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of dégât vs donat

Shared letters: dt. Private to "dégât": gâé. Private to "donat": ano.

"dégât" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "donat" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • donat ← ddonat · dnoat · doant · donatt · donnat · donta · odnat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dégât" for "donat" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\de.ɡa\ versus \dɔ.na\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "dégât" or "donat"?
"dégât" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,555 in our French list, against #39,260 for "donat". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "dégât" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "donat" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #80,077 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dégât" and "donat" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "donat vs dotant". 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 #80,077 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