déjantévsdevanceWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: déjanté is a adjective, devance is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“déjanté” is an adjective and “devance” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,293
“déjanté” frequency rank
#16,591
“devance” frequency rank
53884
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature déjanté devance
Definition Fou, hors-norme, excentrique. Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de devancer.

Where the eye mixes déjanté and devance

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

7 ch
déjanté
7 ch
devance

Look-alike desk: déjanté vs devance

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: déjanté is \de.ʒɑ̃.te\ while devance is \də.vɑ̃s\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53884, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

déjanté is recorded at frequency rank #37,293, classified as anadj, pronounced \de.ʒɑ̃.te\. devance is at rank #16,591, tagged as averb, pronounced \də.vɑ̃s\.

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 53884, this pair ranks #137,785 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of déjanté vs devance

Shared letters: adn. Private to "déjanté": jté. Private to "devance": cev.

"déjanté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "devance" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devanceddevance · deavnce · devacne · devancce · devanec · devannce · devnace · devvance

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "déjanté" for "devance" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "déjanté" is an adjective and "devance" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "déjanté" vs "devance" - which ranks higher?
"devance" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,591 in our French list, against #37,293 for "déjanté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "déjanté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devance" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #137,785 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "déjanté" and "devance" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "déjanté vs démange". 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 #137,785 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