dépitvsdroitWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: dépit is a noun, droit is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#4,666
“dépit” frequency rank
#224
“droit” frequency rank
4890
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dépit droit
Definition Irritation causée par un froissement d’amour-propre, aigreur suite à la déception, à l'amertume, au sentiment de rancœur plus ou moins tenace, difficile à avouer. Qui se trouve du côté est quand on fait face au nord (dans le cas où on parle de soi, car on utilise cet adjectif en adoptant le point de vue de la personne dont on parle). Qui est du côté opposé à celui de son cœur pour la majorité des êtres humains, ou encore du côté de celui de la main qui sert à écrire chez la majorité.

Where the eye mixes dépit and droit

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

5 ch
dépit
5 ch
droit

Visual trap between dépit and droit

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dépit is \de.pi\ while droit is \dʁwa\. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4890, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dépit is recorded at frequency rank #4,666, classified as anoun, pronounced \de.pi\. droit is at rank #224, tagged as anadj, pronounced \dʁwa\.

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 4890, this pair ranks #430,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of dépit vs droit

Shared letters: dit. Private to "dépit": . Private to "droit": or.

"dépit" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "droit" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • droitddroit · dorit · driot · droitt · droti · drroit · rdoit

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dépit" for "droit" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dépit" is a noun and "droit" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dépit" or "droit" show up more?
"droit" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #224 in our French list, against #4,666 for "dépit". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "dépit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "droit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #430,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dépit" and "droit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "denim vs dépit". 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 #430,425 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