dessinéevsdessinezWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: dessinée is a adjective, dessinez is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“dessinée” is an adjective and “dessinez” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,374
“dessinée” frequency rank
#47,278
“dessinez” frequency rank
55652
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dessinée dessinez
Definition Féminin singulier de dessiné. Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de dessiner.

Same sound, different letters: dessinée vs dessinez

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. dessinée (CVCCVCVV) and dessinez (CVCCVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

8 ch
dessinée
8 ch
dessinez

Homophone desk: dessinée vs dessinez

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: dessinée and dessinez carry the same recorded pronunciation, \de.si.ne\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55652, 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\. dessinez is at rank #47,278, tagged as averb, 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 55652, this pair ranks #126,104 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dessinée vs dessinez

Shared letters: deins. Private to "dessinée": é. Private to "dessinez": z.

"dessinée" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVV  ·  "dessinez" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dessinez ← ddessinez · desinez · desisnez · dessienz · dessinezz · dessinnez · dessinze · dessniez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dessinée" for "dessinez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dessinée" is an adjective and "dessinez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dessinée" or "dessinez" show up more?
"dessinée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,374 in our French list, against #47,278 for "dessinez". 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" / "dessinez". 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 "dessinez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #126,104 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dessinée" and "dessinez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dessina vs dessinez". 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 #126,104 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