exercévsexercerConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#10,320
“exercé” frequency rank
#4,232
“exercer” frequency rank
14552
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature exercé exercer
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de exercer. Dresser, former, instruire à quelque chose par des actes fréquents.

Same sound, different letters: exercé vs exercer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. exercé runs 6 letters (VCVCCV) against exercer's 7 (VCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
exercé
7 ch
exercer

Same sound, different spelling - exercé / exercer

This is the hard kind. exercé and exercer are pronounced identically (\ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14552, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

exercé is recorded at frequency rank #10,320, classified as averb, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\. exercer is at rank #4,232, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\.

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 14552, this pair ranks #396,182 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of exercé vs exercer

Shared letters: cerx. Private to "exercé": é. Private to "exercer": -.

"exercé" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "exercer" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exercer ← eexrcer · execrer · exerccer · exercerr · exercre · exerecr · exerrcer · exrecer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "exercé" and "exercer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "exercé" vs "exercer" - which ranks higher?
"exercer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,232 in our French list, against #10,320 for "exercé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

"exercé" and "exercer" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "exercé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exercer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #396,182 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "exercé" and "exercer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "exercé vs exercera". 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 #396,182 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