Which to use
“essai” is a noun and “essaient” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #2,277
- “essai” frequency rank
- #9,161
- “essaient” frequency rank
- 11438
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | essai | essaient |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Test, examen, épreuve de solidité, de pérennité, d’adéquation, de potabilité, de comestibilité, etc. | Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe essayer. |
Same sound, different letters: essai vs essaient
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - essai and essaient
Say them out loud and nothing separates them: essai and essaient carry the same recorded pronunciation, \e.sɛ\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 3 extra letter(s) - “essai” sits inside “essaient”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11438, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
essai is recorded at frequency rank #2,277, classified as anoun, pronounced \e.sɛ\. essaient is at rank #9,161, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.sɛ\.
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 11438, this pair ranks #409,139 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of essai vs essaient
Shared letters: aeis. Private to "essai": -. Private to "essaient": nt.
"essai" · 5 letters · shape VCCVV · "essaient" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "essai" and "essaient" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "essai" or "essaient"?
Useful next steps
"essai" and "essaient" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "essai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "essaient" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #409,139 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "essai" and "essaient" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "essai vs essay". 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 #409,139 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.