envoyavsenvoyéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: envoya is a verb, envoyée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“envoya” is a verb and “envoyée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,610
“envoya” frequency rank
#6,613
“envoyée” frequency rank
23223
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature envoya envoyée
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de envoyer. Celle qui a été envoyée.

Where the eye mixes envoya and envoyée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. envoya runs 6 letters (VCCVVV) against envoyée's 7 (VCCVVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
envoya
7 ch
envoyée

Visual trap between envoya and envoyée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: envoya is \ɑ̃.vwa.ja\ while envoyée is \ɑ̃.vwa.je\. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23223, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

envoya is recorded at frequency rank #16,610, classified as averb, pronounced \ɑ̃.vwa.ja\. envoyée is at rank #6,613, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɑ̃.vwa.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 23223, this pair ranks #353,719 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of envoya vs envoyée

Shared letters: enovy. Private to "envoya": a. Private to "envoyée": é.

"envoya" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV  ·  "envoyée" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • envoyaennvoya · enovya · envoay · envoyya · envvoya · envyoa · evnoya · nevoya

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "envoya" for "envoyée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "envoya" is a verb and "envoyée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "envoya" or "envoyée" show up more?
"envoyée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,613 in our French list, against #16,610 for "envoya". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "envoya" and "envoyée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "envoya" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "envoyée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #353,719 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "envoya" and "envoyée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Enora vs envoya". 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 #353,719 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