effrayévseffrayerWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: effrayé is a adjective, effrayer is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“effrayé” is an adjective and “effrayer” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,697
“effrayé” frequency rank
#18,186
“effrayer” frequency rank
35883
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature effrayé effrayer
Definition Qui est plein de frayeur. Remplir de frayeur.

Same sound, different letters: effrayé vs effrayer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
effrayé
8 ch
effrayer

Ear matches; page differs - effrayé and effrayer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: effrayé and effrayer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \e.fʁɛ.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35883, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

effrayé is recorded at frequency rank #17,697, classified as anadj, pronounced \e.fʁɛ.je\. effrayer is at rank #18,186, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.fʁɛ.je\.

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 35883, this pair ranks #273,539 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of effrayé vs effrayer

Shared letters: aefry. Private to "effrayé": é. Private to "effrayer": -.

"effrayé" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV  ·  "effrayer" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • effrayereffaryer · effraeyr · effrayerr · effrayre · effrayyer · effrrayer · effryaer · efrayer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "effrayé" for "effrayer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "effrayé" is an adjective and "effrayer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "effrayé" vs "effrayer" - which ranks higher?
"effrayé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,697 in our French list, against #18,186 for "effrayer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"effrayé" and "effrayer" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "effrayé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "effrayer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #273,539 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "effrayé" and "effrayer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "effrayé vs effréné". 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 #273,539 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