elevsenfléConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#40,239
“ele” frequency rank
#42,318
“enflé” frequency rank
82557
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ele enflé
Definition Parole, discours, propos. Qui est soumis à une enflure.

Letter map: ele vs enflé

Shared letters muted; letters that set ele and enflé apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ele
5 ch
enflé

Part-of-speech tell for ele / enflé

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ele is anoun and enfléanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82557, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ele is recorded at frequency rank #40,239, classified as anoun. enflé is at rank #42,318, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.fle\.

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 82557, this pair ranks #16,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ele vs enflé

Shared letters: el. Private to "ele": -. Private to "enflé": fné.

"ele" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "enflé" · 5 letters · shape VCCCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ele" for "enflé" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ele" is a noun and "enflé" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ele" or "enflé" show up more?
"ele" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,239 in our French list, against #42,318 for "enflé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "ele" vs "enflé" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ele" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "enflé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ele" and "enflé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ele vs EPO". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #16,492 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