employévsemployésTell them apart

Which to use

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

#2,713
“employé” frequency rank
#1,701
“employés” frequency rank
4414
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employé employés
Definition Qui est en usage, utilisé. Masculin pluriel de employé.

Same sound, different letters: employé vs employés

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

7 ch
employé
8 ch
employés

Homophone desk: employé vs employés

This is the hard kind. employé and employés 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 1 extra letter(s) - “employé” sits inside “employés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4414, 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\. employés is at rank #1,701, 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 4414, this pair ranks #431,677 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of employé vs employés

Shared letters: elmopyé. Private to "employé": -. Private to "employés": s.

"employé" · 7 letters · shape VCCCVVV  ·  "employés" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "employé" for "employés" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɑ̃.plwa.je\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "employé" or "employés" show up more?
"employés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,701 in our French list, against #2,713 for "employé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"employé" and "employés" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "employé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "employés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #431,677 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employé" and "employés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employé vs employez". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #431,677 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