essayavsessayerTell them apart

Which to use

“essaya” and “essayer” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#27,804
“essaya” frequency rank
#963
“essayer” frequency rank
28767
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature essaya essayer
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de essayer. Mettre à l’essai ; vérifier le bon fonctionnement.

Where the eye mixes essaya and essayer

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

6 ch
essaya
7 ch
essayer

Look-alike desk: essaya vs essayer

A purely visual mix-up. essaya (\e.sɛ.ja\) and essayer (\e.se.je\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28767, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

essaya is recorded at frequency rank #27,804, classified as averb, pronounced \e.sɛ.ja\. essayer is at rank #963, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.se.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 28767, this pair ranks #320,844 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of essaya vs essayer

Shared letters: aesy. Private to "essaya": -. Private to "essayer": r.

"essaya" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVV  ·  "essayer" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • essayaesasya · esaya · essaay · essayya · essyaa · sesaya
  • essayeresasyer · esayer · essaeyr · essayerr · essayre · essayyer · essyaer · sesayer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "essaya" and "essayer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\e.sɛ.ja\ versus \e.se.je\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "essaya" or "essayer"?
"essayer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #963 in our French list, against #27,804 for "essaya". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "essaya" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "essayer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #320,844 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "essaya" and "essayer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "España vs essaya". 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 #320,844 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