emportévsexhorteWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#8,385
“emporté” frequency rank
#24,968
“exhorte” frequency rank
33353
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature emporté exhorte
Definition Qui est enclin à s’emporter de colère. Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de exhorter.

Where the eye mixes emporté and exhorte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. emporté and exhorte follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
emporté
7 ch
exhorte

Look-alike desk: emporté vs exhorte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: emporté is \ɑ̃.pɔʁ.te\ while exhorte is \ɛɡ.zɔʁt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33353, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

emporté is recorded at frequency rank #8,385, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.pɔʁ.te\. exhorte is at rank #24,968, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɔʁt\.

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 33353, this pair ranks #291,204 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of emporté vs exhorte

Shared letters: eort. Private to "emporté": mpé. Private to "exhorte": hx.

"emporté" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCV  ·  "exhorte" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exhorte ← ehxorte · exhhorte · exhoret · exhorrte · exhortte · exhotre · exhrote · exohrte

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "emporté" for "exhorte" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "emporté" is an adjective and "exhorte" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "emporté" or "exhorte"?
"emporté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,385 in our French list, against #24,968 for "exhorte". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "emporté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exhorte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #291,204 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "emporté" and "exhorte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "exhorte vs exportée". 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 #291,204 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