encourageaitvsencourageantWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#41,268
“encourageait” frequency rank
#15,367
“encourageant” frequency rank
56635
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature encourageait encourageant
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de encourager. Qui encourage.

Letter map: encourageait vs encourageant

Shared letters muted; letters that set encourageait and encourageant apart highlighted. Shared run: 11.

12 ch
encourageait
12 ch
encourageant

Role in the sentence - encourageait and encourageant

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: encourageait is averb and encourageantanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “encourageait” becomes n in “encourageant”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56635, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

encourageait is recorded at frequency rank #41,268, classified as averb, pronounced \ɑ̃.ku.ʁa.ʒɛ\. encourageant is at rank #15,367, tagged as anadj.

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 56635, this pair ranks #119,873 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of encourageait vs encourageant

Shared letters: acegnortu. Private to "encourageait": i. Private to "encourageant": -.

"encourageait" · 12 letters · shape VCCVVCVCVVVC  ·  "encourageant" · 12 letters · shape VCCVVCVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • encourageaitecnourageait · enccourageait · encoruageait · encouargeait · encouraegait · encouragaeit · encourageaitt · encourageati
  • encourageantecnourageant · enccourageant · encoruageant · encouargeant · encouraegant · encouragaent · encourageannt · encourageantt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "encourageait" for "encourageant" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "encourageait" is a verb and "encourageant" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "encourageait" or "encourageant"?
"encourageant" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,367 in our French list, against #41,268 for "encourageait". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "encourageait" vs "encourageant" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "encourageait" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "encourageant" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #119,873 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "encourageait" and "encourageant" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "encourageait vs encourageante". 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 #119,873 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