déjantévsdevantsWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#37,293
“déjanté” frequency rank
#23,169
“devants” frequency rank
60462
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature déjanté devants
Definition Fou, hors-norme, excentrique. Pluriel de devant.

Where the eye mixes déjanté and devants

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

7 ch
déjanté
7 ch
devants

Visual trap between déjanté and devants

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: déjanté is \de.ʒɑ̃.te\ while devants is \də.vɑ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 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 60462, 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\. devants is at rank #23,169, tagged as anoun, pronounced \də.vɑ̃\.

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 60462, this pair ranks #97,442 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of déjanté vs devants

Shared letters: adnt. Private to "déjanté": . Private to "devants": esv.

"déjanté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "devants" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devantsddevants · deavnts · devannts · devanst · devantss · devantts · devatns · devnats

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "déjanté" and "devants" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "déjanté" is an adjective and "devants" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "déjanté" vs "devants" - which ranks higher?
"devants" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,169 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.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "déjanté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devants" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #97,442 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "déjanté" and "devants" 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 #97,442 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