églisevsépriseWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: église is a noun, éprise is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“église” is a noun and “éprise” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#892
“église” frequency rank
#48,285
“éprise” frequency rank
49177
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature église éprise
Definition Lieu de culte dans la religion chrétienne. Féminin singulier de épris.

Where the eye mixes église and éprise

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. église and éprise follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
église
6 ch
éprise

Visual trap between église and éprise

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: église is \e.ɡliz\ while éprise is \e.pʁiz\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49177, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

église is recorded at frequency rank #892, classified as anoun, pronounced \e.ɡliz\. éprise is at rank #48,285, tagged as anadj, pronounced \e.pʁiz\.

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 49177, this pair ranks #172,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of église vs éprise

Shared letters: eisé. Private to "église": gl. Private to "éprise": pr.

"église" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "éprise" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "église" for "éprise" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "église" is a noun and "éprise" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "église" or "éprise" show up more?
"église" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #892 in our French list, against #48,285 for "éprise". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "église" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "éprise" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #172,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "église" and "éprise" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "écrie vs éprise". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #172,813 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