emballéevsemballerTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#35,013
“emballée” frequency rank
#21,303
“emballer” frequency rank
56316
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature emballée emballer
Definition Féminin singulier de emballé. Mettre en balle des objets en vue du transport.

Same sound, different letters: emballée vs emballer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. emballée (VCCVCCVV) and emballer (VCCVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

8 ch
emballée
8 ch
emballer

Same sound, different spelling - emballée / emballer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: emballée and emballer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.ba.le\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56316, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

emballée is recorded at frequency rank #35,013, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.ba.le\. emballer is at rank #21,303, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɑ̃.ba.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 56316, this pair ranks #121,841 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of emballée vs emballer

Shared letters: abelm. Private to "emballée": é. Private to "emballer": r.

"emballée" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVV  ·  "emballer" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • emballer ← ebmaller · emabller · embalelr · embaler · emballerr · emballre · embballer · emblaler

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "emballée" and "emballer" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "emballée" is an adjective and "emballer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "emballée" or "emballer"?
"emballer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,303 in our French list, against #35,013 for "emballée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've separated the homophone pair "emballée" / "emballer". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "emballée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "emballer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #121,841 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "emballée" and "emballer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "émaillée vs emballée". 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 #121,841 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