employervsemployésWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: employer is a verb, employés is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#8,700
“employer” frequency rank
#1,701
“employés” frequency rank
10401
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employer employés
Definition Utiliser ; user ; se servir de. Masculin pluriel de employé.

Same sound, different letters: employer vs employés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. employer and employés follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCCVVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
employer
8 ch
employés

Same sound, different spelling - employer / employés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: employer and employés carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anadjective, 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 10401, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

employer is recorded at frequency rank #8,700, classified as averb, 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 10401, this pair ranks #413,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of employer vs employés

Shared letters: elmopy. Private to "employer": r. Private to "employés": sé.

"employer" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC  ·  "employés" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "employer" for "employés" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "employer" is a verb and "employés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "employer" or "employés"?
"employés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,701 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

You've separated the homophone pair "employer" / "employés". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "employer" 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 #413,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employer" and "employés" 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 #413,129 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