doigtévsdoteWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#40,717
“doigté” frequency rank
#22,237
“dote” frequency rank
62954
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Where the eye mixes doigté and dote

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

6 ch
doigté
4 ch
dote

Why the eye confuses doigté with dote

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: doigté is \dwa.te\ while dote is \dɔt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 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 62954, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

doigté is recorded at frequency rank #40,717, classified as anoun, pronounced \dwa.te\. dote is at rank #22,237, tagged as averb, pronounced \dɔt\.

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 62954, this pair ranks #84,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of doigté vs dote

Shared letters: dot. Private to "doigté": gié. Private to "dote": e.

"doigté" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "dote" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • doteddote · doet · dotte · dtoe · odte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "doigté" and "dote" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "doigté" is a noun and "dote" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "doigté" or "dote" show up more?
"dote" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,237 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

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "doigté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dote" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #84,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "doigté" and "dote" 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 #84,377 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