Which to use
“enfant” is a noun and “errant” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #433
- “enfant” frequency rank
- #21,311
- “errant” frequency rank
- 21744
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | enfant | errant |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Garçon ou fille qui n’a pas encore atteint l’adolescence. | Qui ne cesse de voyager ; vagabond. |
Where the eye mixes enfant and errant
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. enfant and errant follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between enfant and errant
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: enfant is \ɑ̃.fɑ̃\ while errant is \ɛ.ʁɑ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21744, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
enfant is recorded at frequency rank #433, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɑ̃.fɑ̃\. errant is at rank #21,311, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛ.ʁɑ̃\.
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 21744, this pair ranks #361,640 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of enfant vs errant
Shared letters: aent. Private to "enfant": f. Private to "errant": r.
"enfant" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC · "errant" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "enfant" for "errant" ever safe?
Frequency check: "enfant" vs "errant" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "enfant" and "errant" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "enfant" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "errant" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #361,640 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "enfant" and "errant" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "errant vs errent". 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 #361,640 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.