émit vs était, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“émit” and “était” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#49,446
“émit” frequency rank: #64
“était” frequency rank: 49510
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	émit	était
Definition	Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de émettre.	Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait du verbe être.

Where the eye mixes émit and était

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. émit runs 4 letters (VCVC) against était's 5 (VCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch

émit

5 ch

était

Why the eye confuses émit with était

A purely visual mix-up. émit (\e.mi\) and était (\e.tɛ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49510, 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\. était is at rank #64, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.tɛ\.

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 49510, this pair ranks #170,032 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of émit vs était

Shared letters: ité. Private to "émit": m. Private to "était": a.

"émit" · 4 letters · shape VCVC · "était" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "émit" for "était" ever safe?

No. They are said differently (\e.mi\ versus \e.tɛ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.

Frequency check: "émit" vs "était" - which ranks higher?

"était" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #64 in our French list, against #49,446 for "émit". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

Full dictionary entry for "émit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "était" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #170,032 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"émit" and "était" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "edito vs émit". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #170,032 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.