employéevsemployerWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#7,821
“employée” frequency rank
#8,700
“employer” frequency rank
16521
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employée employer
Definition Celle qui est rétribuée pour produire un travail au sein d’une entreprise ou d’une administration. Utiliser ; user ; se servir de.

Same sound, different letters: employée vs employer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. employée (VCCCVVVV) and employer (VCCCVVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

8 ch
employée
8 ch
employer

Ear matches; page differs - employée and employer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: employée and employer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16521, 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\. employer is at rank #8,700, tagged as averb, 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 16521, this pair ranks #387,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of employée vs employer

Shared letters: elmopy. Private to "employée": é. Private to "employer": r.

"employée" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVV  ·  "employer" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • employer ← emlpoyer · emmployer · emplloyer · emploeyr · employerr · employre · employyer · emplyoer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "employée" and "employer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "employée" is a noun and "employer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "employée" or "employer"?
"employée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,821 in our French list, against #8,700 for "employer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"employée" and "employer" 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 "employer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #387,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employée" and "employer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employer 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 #387,454 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