employéevsemployéesTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#7,821
“employée” frequency rank
#14,029
“employées” frequency rank
21850
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employée employées
Definition Celle qui est rétribuée pour produire un travail au sein d’une entreprise ou d’une administration. Féminin pluriel de employé.

Same sound, different letters: employée vs employées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. employée runs 8 letters (VCCCVVVV) against employées's 9 (VCCCVVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
employée
9 ch
employées

Same sound, different spelling - employée / employées

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: employée and employées carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “employée” sits inside “employées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21850, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

employée is recorded at frequency rank #7,821, classified as anoun, 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 21850, this pair ranks #361,110 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of employée vs employées

Shared letters: elmopyé. Private to "employée": -. Private to "employées": s.

"employée" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVV  ·  "employées" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVVVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "employée" and "employées" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "employée" is a noun and "employées" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "employée" vs "employées" - which ranks higher?
"employée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,821 in our French list, against #14,029 for "employées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "employée" 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 #361,110 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employée" and "employées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employées vs employons". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #361,110 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