héritéevshermiteTell them apart

Quick tell: héritée is a verb, hermite is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“héritée” is a verb and “hermite” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,209
“héritée” frequency rank
#45,653
“hermite” frequency rank
75862
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature héritée hermite
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de hériter. Orthographe désuète de ermite.

Where the eye mixes héritée and hermite

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. héritée (CVCVCVV) and hermite (CVCCVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
héritée
7 ch
hermite

Visual trap between héritée and hermite

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: héritée is \e.ʁi.te\ while hermite is \ɛʁ.mit\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 75862, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

héritée is recorded at frequency rank #30,209, classified as averb, pronounced \e.ʁi.te\. hermite is at rank #45,653, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛʁ.mit\.

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 75862, this pair ranks #32,802 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of héritée vs hermite

Shared letters: ehirt. Private to "héritée": é. Private to "hermite": m.

"héritée" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV  ·  "hermite" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hermite ← ehrmite · hemrite · herimte · hermiet · hermitte · hermmite · hermtie · herrmite

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "héritée" for "hermite" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "héritée" is a verb and "hermite" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "héritée" vs "hermite" - which ranks higher?
"héritée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,209 in our French list, against #45,653 for "hermite". 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 "héritée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hermite" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #32,802 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "héritée" and "hermite" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hermitage vs hermite". 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 #32,802 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