gripvsgrippeTell them apart

Which to use

“grip” and “grippe” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#46,198
“grip” frequency rank
#7,836
“grippe” frequency rank
54034
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature grip grippe
Definition Mâchoires métalliques destinées à saisir les câbles de traction des funiculaires et tramways guidés par câble. Prise, emprise.

Same sound, different letters: grip vs grippe

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. grip runs 4 letters (CCVC) against grippe's 6 (CCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
grip
6 ch
grippe

Ear matches; page differs - grip and grippe

This is the hard kind. grip and grippe are pronounced identically (\ɡʁip\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “grip” sits inside “grippe”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54034, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

grip is recorded at frequency rank #46,198, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɡʁip\. grippe is at rank #7,836, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɡʁip\.

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 54034, this pair ranks #136,751 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of grip vs grippe

Shared letters: gipr. Private to "grip": -. Private to "grippe": e.

"grip" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "grippe" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • grip ← ggrip · girp · gripp · grpi · grrip · rgip
  • grippe ← ggrippe · girppe · gripe · gripep · grpipe · grrippe · rgippe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "grip" and "grippe" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɡʁip\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "grip" or "grippe" show up more?
"grippe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,836 in our French list, against #46,198 for "grip". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "grip" / "grippe". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "grip" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "grippe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #136,751 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "grip" and "grippe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "grip vs grow". 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 #136,751 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