était vs exit, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“était” is a verb and “exit” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#64
“était” frequency rank: #21,315
“exit” frequency rank: 21379
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	était	exit
Definition	Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait du verbe être.	Sortie théâtrale.

Where the eye mixes était and exit

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. était runs 5 letters (VCVVC) against exit's 4 (VCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch

était

4 ch

exit

Why the eye confuses était with exit

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: était is \e.tɛ\ while exit is \ɛɡ.zit\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21379, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

était is recorded at frequency rank #64, classified as averb, pronounced \e.tɛ\. exit is at rank #21,315, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛɡ.zit\.

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 21379, this pair ranks #363,465 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of était vs exit

Shared letters: it. Private to "était": aé. Private to "exit": ex.

"était" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC · "exit" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

exit ← eixt · exitt · exti · exxit · xeit

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "était" for "exit" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "était" is a verb and "exit" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "était" vs "exit" - which ranks higher?

"était" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #64 in our French list, against #21,315 for "exit". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

Full dictionary entry for "était" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "exit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #363,465 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"était" and "exit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "edito vs exit". 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 #363,465 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.