demandevsdémangeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#249
“demande” frequency rank
#40,226
“démange” frequency rank
40475
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature demande démange
Definition Action de demander : requête. Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de démanger.

Where the eye mixes demande and démange

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. demande and démange follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
demande
7 ch
démange

Visual trap between demande and démange

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: demande is \də.mɑ̃d\ while démange is \de.mɑ̃ʒ\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40475, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

demande is recorded at frequency rank #249, classified as anoun, pronounced \də.mɑ̃d\. démange is at rank #40,226, tagged as averb, pronounced \de.mɑ̃ʒ\.

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 40475, this pair ranks #240,206 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of demande vs démange

Shared letters: ademn. Private to "demande": -. Private to "démange": gé.

"demande" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "démange" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • demande ← ddemande · deamnde · demadne · demandde · demaned · demannde · demmande · demnade

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "demande" and "démange" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "demande" is a noun and "démange" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "demande" or "démange" show up more?
"demande" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #249 in our French list, against #40,226 for "démange". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "demande" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "démange" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #240,206 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "demande" and "démange" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "damage 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 #240,206 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