employésvsemployezWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#1,701
“employés” frequency rank
#48,490
“employez” frequency rank
50191
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature employés employez
Definition Masculin pluriel de employé. Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de employer.

Same sound, different letters: employés vs employez

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

8 ch
employés
8 ch
employez

Ear matches; page differs - employés and employez

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: employés and employez carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, 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 50191, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

employés is recorded at frequency rank #1,701, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.plwa.je\. employez is at rank #48,490, 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 50191, this pair ranks #164,581 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of employés vs employez

Shared letters: elmopy. Private to "employés": sé. Private to "employez": z.

"employés" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC  ·  "employez" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • employez ← emlpoyez · emmployez · emplloyez · emploeyz · employezz · employyez · employze · emplyoez

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "employés" and "employez" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "employés" is an adjective and "employez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "employés" or "employez" show up more?
"employés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,701 in our French list, against #48,490 for "employez". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "employés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "employez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #164,581 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "employés" and "employez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "employées 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 #164,581 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