employévsemployéeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#2,713
“employé” frequency rank
#7,821
“employée” frequency rank
10534
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employé employée
Definition Qui est en usage, utilisé. Celle qui est rétribuée pour produire un travail au sein d’une entreprise ou d’une administration.

Same sound, different letters: employé vs employée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. employé runs 7 letters (VCCCVVV) against employée's 8 (VCCCVVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
employé
8 ch
employée

Homophone desk: employé vs employée

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: employé and employée carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other anoun, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “employé” sits inside “employée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10534, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

employé is recorded at frequency rank #2,713, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. employée is at rank #7,821, tagged as anoun, 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 10534, this pair ranks #412,625 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of employé vs employée

Shared letters: elmopyé. Private to "employé": -. Private to "employée": -.

"employé" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV  ·  "employée" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "employé" and "employée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "employé" is an adjective and "employée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "employé" vs "employée" - which ranks higher?
"employé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,713 in our French list, against #7,821 for "employée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "employé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "employée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #412,625 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employé" and "employée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employée vs employez". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #412,625 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