Which to use
“excellence” is a noun and “excellente” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #4,230
- “excellence” frequency rank
- #3,000
- “excellente” frequency rank
- 7230
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | excellence | excellente |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Degré élevé de qualité. | Féminin singulier de excellent. |
Where the eye mixes excellence and excellente
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 9 letters in sequence. excellence and excellente follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCCVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: excellence vs excellente
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: excellence is \ɛk.se.lɑ̃s\ while excellente is \ɛk.sɛ.lɑ̃t\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - c in “excellence” becomes t in “excellente”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7230, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
excellence is recorded at frequency rank #4,230, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɛk.se.lɑ̃s\. excellente is at rank #3,000, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛk.sɛ.lɑ̃t\.
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 7230, this pair ranks #423,784 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of excellence vs excellente
Shared letters: celnx. Private to "excellence": -. Private to "excellente": t.
"excellence" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCCVCCV · "excellente" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- excellence ← ecxellence · exccellence · excelelnce · excelence · excellecne · excellencce · excellenec · excellennce
- excellente ← ecxellente · exccellente · excelelnte · excelente · excellenet · excellennte · excellentte · excelletne
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "excellence" for "excellente" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "excellence" or "excellente" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "excellence" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "excellente" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #423,784 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "excellence" and "excellente" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "excellence vs excellentes". 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 #423,784 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.