gâchéevsgardéeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#35,074
“gâchée” frequency rank
#16,373
“gardée” frequency rank
51447
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gâchée gardée
Definition Quantité de béton frais produite en un seul cycle par un malaxeur discontinu ; quantité déversée pendant une minute d'un malaxeur continu. Féminin singulier de gardé.

Where the eye mixes gâchée and gardée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. gâchée and gardée follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
gâchée
6 ch
gardée

Why the eye confuses gâchée with gardée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: gâchée is \ɡɑ.ʃe\ while gardée is \ɡaʁ.de\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51447, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gâchée is recorded at frequency rank #35,074, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɡɑ.ʃe\. gardée is at rank #16,373, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɡaʁ.de\.

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 51447, this pair ranks #154,934 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of gâchée vs gardée

Shared letters: egé. Private to "gâchée": châ. Private to "gardée": adr.

"gâchée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "gardée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "gâchée" for "gardée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "gâchée" is a noun and "gardée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "gâchée" vs "gardée" - which ranks higher?
"gardée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,373 in our French list, against #35,074 for "gâchée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "gâchée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gardée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #154,934 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gâchée" and "gardée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gâchée vs gâtée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #154,934 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