émitvsémusWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: émit is a verb, émus is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#49,446
“émit” frequency rank
#34,822
“émus” frequency rank
84268
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature émit émus
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de émettre. Masculin pluriel de ému.

Where the eye mixes émit and émus

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. émit and émus follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
émit
4 ch
émus

Why the eye confuses émit with émus

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: émit is \e.mi\ while émus is \e.my\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84268, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

émit is recorded at frequency rank #49,446, classified as averb, pronounced \e.mi\. émus is at rank #34,822, tagged as anadj, pronounced \e.my\.

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 84268, this pair ranks #13,289 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of émit vs émus

Shared letters: mé. Private to "émit": it. Private to "émus": su.

"émit" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "émus" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "émit" for "émus" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "émit" is a verb and "émus" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "émit" vs "émus" - which ranks higher?
"émus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,822 in our French list, against #49,446 for "émit". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "émit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "émus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,289 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "émit" and "émus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "edito vs émit". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #13,289 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