exercéevsexergueConfusable pair

Quick tell: exercée is a adjective, exergue is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“exercée” is an adjective and “exergue” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,127
“exercée” frequency rank
#20,138
“exergue” frequency rank
36265
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature exercée exergue
Definition Féminin singulier de exercé. Petit espace réservé au bas d'une monnaie, d’une médaille (dans son champ), voire d'une cloche d'édifice religieux, pour y mettre une date, une inscription, une devise.

Where the eye mixes exercée and exergue

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. exercée and exergue follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCVCCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
exercée
7 ch
exergue

Look-alike desk: exercée vs exergue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: exercée is \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\ while exergue is \ɛɡ.zɛʁɡ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36265, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

exercée is recorded at frequency rank #16,127, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁ.se\. exergue is at rank #20,138, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛɡ.zɛʁɡ\.

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 36265, this pair ranks #270,782 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of exercée vs exergue

Shared letters: erx. Private to "exercée": cé. Private to "exergue": gu.

"exercée" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV  ·  "exergue" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exergue ← eexrgue · exegrue · exergeu · exerggue · exerrgue · exeruge · exregue · exxergue

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "exercée" and "exergue" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "exercée" is an adjective and "exergue" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "exercée" or "exergue"?
"exercée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,127 in our French list, against #20,138 for "exergue". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "exercée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exergue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #270,782 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "exercée" and "exergue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "émergée vs exergue". 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 #270,782 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