designsvsdeviensWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#41,219
“designs” frequency rank
#6,181
“deviens” frequency rank
47400
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature designs deviens
Definition Pluriel de design. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de devenir.

Where the eye mixes designs and deviens

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

7 ch
designs
7 ch
deviens

Why the eye confuses designs with deviens

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: designs is \di.zajn\ while deviens is \də.vjɛ̃\. 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 47400, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

designs is recorded at frequency rank #41,219, classified as anoun, pronounced \di.zajn\. deviens is at rank #6,181, tagged as averb, pronounced \də.vjɛ̃\.

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 47400, this pair ranks #187,279 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of designs vs deviens

Shared letters: deins. Private to "designs": g. Private to "deviens": v.

"designs" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCC  ·  "deviens" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • designsddesigns · deisgns · desgins · desiggns · designns · designss · desigsn · desings
  • deviensddeviens · deivens · deveins · devienns · devienss · deviesn · devines · devviens

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "designs" and "deviens" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "designs" is a noun and "deviens" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "designs" or "deviens" show up more?
"deviens" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,181 in our French list, against #41,219 for "designs". 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 "designs" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "deviens" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #187,279 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "designs" and "deviens" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "désigna vs designs". 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 #187,279 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