dictevsdoigtéConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#20,979
“dicte” frequency rank
#40,717
“doigté” frequency rank
61696
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dicte doigté
Definition Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de dicter. Manière de positionner ses doigts sur un instrument pour jouer une note donnée.

Where the eye mixes dicte and doigté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
dicte
6 ch
doigté

Look-alike desk: dicte vs doigté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dicte is \dikt\ while doigté is \dwa.te\. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61696, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dicte is recorded at frequency rank #20,979, classified as averb, pronounced \dikt\. doigté is at rank #40,717, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dwa.te\.

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 61696, this pair ranks #90,930 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of dicte vs doigté

Shared letters: dit. Private to "dicte": ce. Private to "doigté": goé.

"dicte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "doigté" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dictedcite · ddicte · diccte · dicet · dictte · ditce · idcte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "dicte" and "doigté" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dicte" is a verb and "doigté" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dicte" or "doigté" show up more?
"dicte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,979 in our French list, against #40,717 for "doigté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dicte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "doigté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #90,930 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dicte" and "doigté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "daigne vs doigté". 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 #90,930 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