gagnéevsguinéeWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#14,942
“gagnée” frequency rank
#5,564
“guinée” frequency rank
20506
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gagnée guinée
Definition Féminin singulier de gagné. Pièce de monnaie britannique en or frappée de 1663 à 1813, valant entre 20 et 30 shillings (1-1,5 livre) selon le cours de l’or jusqu’en 1717 et 21 shillings (1,05 livre) depuis.

Where the eye mixes gagnée and guinée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. gagnée (CVCCVV) and guinée (CVVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
gagnée
6 ch
guinée

Visual trap between gagnée and guinée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: gagnée is \ɡa.ɲe\ while guinée is \ɡi.ne\. 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 20506, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gagnée is recorded at frequency rank #14,942, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɡa.ɲe\. guinée is at rank #5,564, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɡi.ne\.

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 20506, this pair ranks #367,923 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of gagnée vs guinée

Shared letters: egné. Private to "gagnée": a. Private to "guinée": iu.

"gagnée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "guinée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "gagnée" and "guinée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "gagnée" is an adjective and "guinée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "gagnée" vs "guinée" - which ranks higher?
"guinée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,564 in our French list, against #14,942 for "gagnée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "gagnée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guinée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #367,923 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gagnée" and "guinée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gagnée vs Gange". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #367,923 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