exercévsexerciceWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: exercé is a verb, exercice is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#10,320
“exercé” frequency rank
#1,661
“exercice” frequency rank
11981
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature exercé exercice
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de exercer. Action d’exercer ou de s’exercer.

Where the eye mixes exercé and exercice

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. exercé runs 6 letters (VCVCCV) against exercice's 8 (VCVCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
exercé
8 ch
exercice

Visual trap between exercé and exercice

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: exercé is \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\ while exercice is \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.sis\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 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 11981, 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\. exercice is at rank #1,661, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.sis\.

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 11981, this pair ranks #407,036 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of exercé vs exercice

Shared letters: cerx. Private to "exercé": é. Private to "exercice": i.

"exercé" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "exercice" · 8 letters · shape VCVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exercice ← eexrcice · execrice · exerccice · exerccie · exercicce · exerciec · exericce · exerrcice

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "exercé" and "exercice" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "exercé" is a verb and "exercice" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "exercé" or "exercice" show up more?
"exercice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,661 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.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "exercé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exercice" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #407,036 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "exercé" and "exercice" 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 #407,036 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