dessinéevsdessinéesTell them apart

Which to use

“dessinée” and “dessinées” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#8,374
“dessinée” frequency rank
#15,122
“dessinées” frequency rank
23496
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dessinée dessinées
Definition Féminin singulier de dessiné. Féminin pluriel de dessiné.

Same sound, different letters: dessinée vs dessinées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. dessinée runs 8 letters (CVCCVCVV) against dessinées's 9 (CVCCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
dessinée
9 ch
dessinées

Ear matches; page differs - dessinée and dessinées

This is the hard kind. dessinée and dessinées are pronounced identically (\de.si.ne\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “dessinée” sits inside “dessinées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23496, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dessinée is recorded at frequency rank #8,374, classified as anadj, pronounced \de.si.ne\. dessinées is at rank #15,122, tagged as anadj, pronounced \de.si.ne\.

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 23496, this pair ranks #352,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of dessinée vs dessinées

Shared letters: deinsé. Private to "dessinée": -. Private to "dessinées": -.

"dessinée" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVV  ·  "dessinées" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dessinée" and "dessinées" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\de.si.ne\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "dessinée" vs "dessinées" - which ranks higher?
"dessinée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,374 in our French list, against #15,122 for "dessinées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "dessinée" / "dessinées". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dessinée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dessinées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #352,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dessinée" and "dessinées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dessinées vs dessinez". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #352,174 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