émergéevsexergueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: émergée is a adjective, exergue is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,875
“émergée” frequency rank
#20,138
“exergue” frequency rank
69013
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature émergée exergue
Definition Féminin singulier de émergé. Petit espace réservé au bas d'une monnaie, d’une médaille (dans son champ), voire d'une cloche d'édifice religieux, pour y mettre une date, une inscription, une devise.

Where the eye mixes émergée and exergue

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

7 ch
émergée
7 ch
exergue

Visual trap between émergée and exergue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: émergée is \e.mɛʁ.ʒe\ while exergue is \ɛɡ.zɛʁɡ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69013, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

émergée is recorded at frequency rank #48,875, classified as anadj, pronounced \e.mɛʁ.ʒe\. exergue is at rank #20,138, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁɡ\.

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 69013, this pair ranks #56,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of émergée vs exergue

Shared letters: egr. Private to "émergée": . Private to "exergue": ux.

"émergée" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV  ·  "exergue" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exergueeexrgue · exegrue · exergeu · exerggue · exerrgue · exeruge · exregue · exxergue

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "émergée" and "exergue" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "émergée" is an adjective and "exergue" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "émergée" or "exergue"?
"exergue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,138 in our French list, against #48,875 for "émergée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "émergée" and "exergue" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "émergée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exergue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #56,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "émergée" and "exergue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "émergée vs émergente". 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 #56,836 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