déléguévsdevenueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: délégué is a noun, devenue is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“délégué” is a noun and “devenue” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,337
“délégué” frequency rank
#2,033
“devenue” frequency rank
7370
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature délégué devenue
Definition Personne qui a reçu une délégation, qui a commission de quelqu’un. Participe passé féminin singulier de devenir.

Where the eye mixes délégué and devenue

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

7 ch
délégué
7 ch
devenue

Why the eye confuses délégué with devenue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: délégué is \de.le.ɡe\ while devenue is \də.və.ny\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7370, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

délégué is recorded at frequency rank #5,337, classified as anoun, pronounced \de.le.ɡe\. devenue is at rank #2,033, tagged as averb, pronounced \də.və.ny\.

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 7370, this pair ranks #423,373 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of délégué vs devenue

Shared letters: du. Private to "délégué": glé. Private to "devenue": env.

"délégué" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV  ·  "devenue" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devenue ← ddevenue · deevnue · deveneu · devennue · deveune · devneue · devvenue · dveenue

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "délégué" for "devenue" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "délégué" is a noun and "devenue" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "délégué" or "devenue"?
"devenue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,033 in our French list, against #5,337 for "délégué". 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 "délégué" and "devenue" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "délégué" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devenue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #423,373 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "délégué" and "devenue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "délégué vs dengue". 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 #423,373 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