Which to use
“employé” and “employées” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #2,713
- “employé” frequency rank
- #14,029
- “employées” frequency rank
- 16742
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | employé | employées |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui est en usage, utilisé. | Féminin pluriel de employé. |
Same sound, different letters: employé vs employées
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. employé runs 7 letters (VCCCVVV) against employées's 9 (VCCCVVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - employé and employées
This is the hard kind. employé and employées are pronounced identically (\ɑ̃.plwa.je\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “employé” sits inside “employées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16742, 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\. employées is at rank #14,029, 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 16742, this pair ranks #386,482 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of employé vs employées
Shared letters: elmopyé. Private to "employé": -. Private to "employées": s.
"employé" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV · "employées" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVVVVC
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "employé" for "employées" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "employé" or "employées" show up more?
What to do next
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 "employées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #386,482 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "employé" and "employées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employées vs employons". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #386,482 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.