écolevsécrouéWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#421
“école” frequency rank
#42,699
“écroué” frequency rank
43120
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature école écroué
Definition Lieu dédié à l’apprentissage. Participe passé masculin singulier de écrouer.

Where the eye mixes école and écroué

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

5 ch
école
6 ch
écroué

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: école is \e.kɔl\ while écroué is \e.kʁu.e\. 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 43120, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

école is recorded at frequency rank #421, classified as anoun, pronounced \e.kɔl\. écroué is at rank #42,699, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.kʁu.e\.

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 43120, this pair ranks #220,464 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of école vs écroué

Shared letters: coé. Private to "école": el. Private to "écroué": ru.

"école" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "écroué" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "école" and "écroué" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "école" is a noun and "écroué" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "école" or "écroué"?
"école" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #421 in our French list, against #42,699 for "écroué". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list