dépitévsdevineWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#35,482
“dépité” frequency rank
#10,485
“devine” frequency rank
45967
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dépité devine
Definition Qui éprouve du dépit. Variante de devineresse.

Where the eye mixes dépité and devine

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

6 ch
dépité
6 ch
devine

Why the eye confuses dépité with devine

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dépité is \de.pi.te\ while devine is \də.vin\. 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 noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45967, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dépité is recorded at frequency rank #35,482, classified as anadj, pronounced \de.pi.te\. devine is at rank #10,485, tagged as anoun, pronounced \də.vin\.

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 45967, this pair ranks #198,668 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dépité vs devine

Shared letters: di. Private to "dépité": pté. Private to "devine": env.

"dépité" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "devine" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devine ← ddevine · deivne · devien · devinne · devnie · devvine · dveine · edvine

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dépité" for "devine" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dépité" is an adjective and "devine" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "dépité" or "devine"?
"devine" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,485 in our French list, against #35,482 for "dépité". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dépité" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #198,668 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dépité" and "devine" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "déduite vs dépité". 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 #198,668 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