Which to use
“essaient” and “essayent” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,161
- “essaient” frequency rank
- #13,376
- “essayent” frequency rank
- 22537
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | essaient | essayent |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe essayer. | Troisième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de essayer. |
Where the eye mixes essaient and essayent
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. essaient and essayent 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 essayent
A purely visual mix-up. essaient (\e.sɛ\) and essayent (\e.sɛj\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - i in “essaient” becomes y in “essayent”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22537, 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\. essayent is at rank #13,376, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.sɛj\.
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 22537, this pair ranks #357,453 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of essaient vs essayent
Shared letters: aenst. Private to "essaient": i. Private to "essayent": y.
"essaient" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC · "essayent" · 8 letters · shape VCCVVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "essaient" and "essayent" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "essaient" vs "essayent" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "essaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "essayent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #357,453 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "essaient" and "essayent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "essayent 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 #357,453 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.