Which to use
“essaient” and “essaies” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,161
- “essaient” frequency rank
- #14,258
- “essaies” frequency rank
- 23419
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | essaient | essaies |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe essayer. | Deuxième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de essayer. |
Same sound, different letters: essaient vs essaies
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. essaient runs 8 letters (VCCVVVCC) against essaies's 7 (VCCVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - essaient and essaies
This is the hard kind. essaient and essaies are pronounced identically (\e.sɛ\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23419, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
essaient is recorded at frequency rank #9,161, classified as averb, pronounced \e.sɛ\. essaies is at rank #14,258, 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 23419, this pair ranks #352,588 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of essaient vs essaies
Shared letters: aeis. Private to "essaient": nt. Private to "essaies": -.
"essaient" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC · "essaies" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "essaient" and "essaies" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "essaient" or "essaies" show up more?
Useful next steps
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "essaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "essaies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #352,588 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "essaient" and "essaies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "essaies vs essayée". 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 #352,588 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.