dîmevsdoiveWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#34,076
“dîme” frequency rank
#14,452
“doive” frequency rank
48528
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dîme doive
Definition Portion des grains, des vins, des fruits, etc., qui se payait à l’église, ou au seigneur du lieu, et qui en était ordinairement le dixième. Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de devoir.

Where the eye mixes dîme and doive

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
dîme
5 ch
doive

Look-alike desk: dîme vs doive

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dîme is \dim\ while doive is \dwav\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48528, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dîme is recorded at frequency rank #34,076, classified as anoun, pronounced \dim\. doive is at rank #14,452, tagged as averb, pronounced \dwav\.

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 48528, this pair ranks #178,206 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dîme vs doive

Shared letters: de. Private to "dîme": . Private to "doive": iov.

"dîme" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "doive" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • doiveddoive · diove · doiev · doivve · dovie · odive

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dîme" for "doive" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dîme" is a noun and "doive" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dîme" or "doive" show up more?
"doive" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,452 in our French list, against #34,076 for "dîme". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "dîme" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "doive" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #178,206 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dîme" and "doive" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dîme vs domi". 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 #178,206 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