fivevsfixéeConfusable pair

Quick tell: five is a noun, fixée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#15,146
“five” frequency rank
#6,826
“fixée” frequency rank
21972
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature five fixée
Definition (radiotéléphonie) Mot de code radiotéléphonique de l'OACI, OTAN et SIA pour le chiffre 5. Féminin singulier de fixé.

Where the eye mixes five and fixée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
five
5 ch
fixée

Why the eye confuses five with fixée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: five is \ˈfai̯f\ while fixée is \fik.se\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21972, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

five is recorded at frequency rank #15,146, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈfai̯f\. fixée is at rank #6,826, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fik.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 21972, this pair ranks #360,459 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of five vs fixée

Shared letters: efi. Private to "five": v. Private to "fixée": .

"five" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "fixée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fiveffive · fiev · fivve · fvie · ifve

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "five" and "fixée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "five" is a noun and "fixée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "five" or "fixée"?
"fixée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,826 in our French list, against #15,146 for "five". 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 "five" and "fixée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "five" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fixée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #360,459 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "five" and "fixée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "filez vs five". 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 #360,459 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