écouléevsécouléesTell them apart

Which to use

“écoulée” and “écoulées” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#20,894
“écoulée” frequency rank
#26,932
“écoulées” frequency rank
47826
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature écoulée écoulées
Definition Féminin singulier de écoulé. Féminin pluriel de écoulé.

Same sound, different letters: écoulée vs écoulées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. écoulée runs 7 letters (VCVVCVV) against écoulées's 8 (VCVVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
écoulée
8 ch
écoulées

Ear matches; page differs - écoulée and écoulées

This is the hard kind. écoulée and écoulées are pronounced identically (\e.ku.le\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “écoulée” sits inside “écoulées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47826, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

écoulée is recorded at frequency rank #20,894, classified as anadj, pronounced \e.ku.le\. écoulées is at rank #26,932, tagged as anadj, pronounced \e.ku.le\.

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 47826, this pair ranks #183,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of écoulée vs écoulées

Shared letters: celoué. Private to "écoulée": -. Private to "écoulées": s.

"écoulée" · 7 letters · shape VCVVCVV  ·  "écoulées" · 8 letters · shape VCVVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "écoulée" and "écoulées" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\e.ku.le\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "écoulée" vs "écoulées" - which ranks higher?
"écoulée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,894 in our French list, against #26,932 for "écoulées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "écoulée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "écoulées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #183,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "écoulée" and "écoulées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "écoulées vs écoutées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #183,836 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