emploievsemployéWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#5,240
“emploie” frequency rank
#2,713
“employé” frequency rank
7953
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature emploie employé
Definition Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de employer. Qui est en usage, utilisé.

Where the eye mixes emploie and employé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. emploie and employé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCCVVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
emploie
7 ch
employé

Visual trap between emploie and employé

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: emploie is \ɑ̃.plwa\ while employé is \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. 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 7953, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

emploie is recorded at frequency rank #5,240, classified as averb, pronounced \ɑ̃.plwa\. employé is at rank #2,713, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.plwa.je\.

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 7953, this pair ranks #421,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of emploie vs employé

Shared letters: elmop. Private to "emploie": i. Private to "employé": yé.

"emploie" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV  ·  "employé" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • emploie ← emlpoie · emmploie · emplioe · emplloie · emploei · empolie · empploie · epmloie

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "emploie" for "employé" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "emploie" is a verb and "employé" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "emploie" or "employé"?
"employé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,713 in our French list, against #5,240 for "emploie". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "emploie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "employé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #421,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "emploie" and "employé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "emploie vs employez". 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 #421,596 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