déportévsdépôtsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#24,562
“déporté” frequency rank
#6,499
“dépôts” frequency rank
31061
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature déporté dépôts
Definition Qui a été envoyé en déportation dans un endroit inhospitalier, dont il ne revient généralement pas. Pluriel de dépôt.

Where the eye mixes déporté and dépôts

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. déporté runs 7 letters (CVCVCCV) against dépôts's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
déporté
6 ch
dépôts

Why the eye confuses déporté with dépôts

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: déporté is \de.pɔʁ.te\ while dépôts is \de.po\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31061, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

déporté is recorded at frequency rank #24,562, classified as anadj, pronounced \de.pɔʁ.te\. dépôts is at rank #6,499, tagged as anoun, pronounced \de.po\.

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 31061, this pair ranks #306,234 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of déporté vs dépôts

Shared letters: dpté. Private to "déporté": or. Private to "dépôts": sô.

"déporté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "dépôts" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "déporté" and "dépôts" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "déporté" is an adjective and "dépôts" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "déporté" or "dépôts"?
"dépôts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,499 in our French list, against #24,562 for "déporté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "déporté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dépôts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #306,234 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "déporté" and "dépôts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "déporté vs déportée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #306,234 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