Which to use
“essaient” and “essayant” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,161
- “essaient” frequency rank
- #7,689
- “essayant” frequency rank
- 16850
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | essaient | essayant |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe essayer. | Participe présent de essayer. |
Where the eye mixes essaient and essayant
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. essaient and essayant follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVVVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: essaient vs essayant
A purely visual mix-up. essaient (\e.sɛ\) and essayant (\e.sɛ.jɑ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16850, 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\. essayant is at rank #7,689, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.sɛ.jɑ̃\.
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 16850, this pair ranks #385,969 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of essaient vs essayant
Shared letters: aenst. Private to "essaient": i. Private to "essayant": y.
"essaient" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC · "essayant" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "essaient" and "essayant" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "essaient" or "essayant"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "essaient" and "essayant" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "essaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "essayant" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #385,969 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "essaient" and "essayant" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "essayant vs essuyant". 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 #385,969 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.