enflévsenvoleWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#42,318
“enflé” frequency rank
#15,873
“envole” frequency rank
58191
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature enflé envole
Definition Qui est soumis à une enflure. Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de envoler.

Where the eye mixes enflé and envole

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. enflé runs 5 letters (VCCCV) against envole's 6 (VCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
enflé
6 ch
envole

Visual trap between enflé and envole

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: enflé is \ɑ̃.fle\ while envole is \ɑ̃.vɔl\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58191, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

enflé is recorded at frequency rank #42,318, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɑ̃.fle\. envole is at rank #15,873, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɑ̃.vɔl\.

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 58191, this pair ranks #110,503 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of enflé vs envole

Shared letters: eln. Private to "enflé": fé. Private to "envole": ov.

"enflé" · 5 letters · shape VCCCV  ·  "envole" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • envole ← ennvole · enovle · envloe · envoel · envolle · envvole · evnole · nevole

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "enflé" for "envole" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "enflé" is an adjective and "envole" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "enflé" or "envole" show up more?
"envole" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,873 in our French list, against #42,318 for "enflé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "enflé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "envole" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #110,503 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "enflé" and "envole" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ele vs enflé". 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 #110,503 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