heurvsheurtéWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#35,538
“heur” frequency rank
#18,501
“heurté” frequency rank
54039
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heur heurté
Definition Bonne fortune, chance heureuse. Qualifie un dessin où l’artiste a négligé de fondre les teintes avec soin et d’adoucir les contours, mais qui est large et vigoureux.

Where the eye mixes heur and heurté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. heur runs 4 letters (CVVC) against heurté's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
heur
6 ch
heurté

Look-alike desk: heur vs heurté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: heur is ^((h muet))\œʁ\ while heurté is ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “heur” sits inside “heurté”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54039, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heur is recorded at frequency rank #35,538, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h muet))\œʁ\. heurté is at rank #18,501, tagged as anadj, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\.

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 54039, this pair ranks #136,724 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of heur vs heurté

Shared letters: ehru. Private to "heur": -. Private to "heurté": té.

"heur" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "heurté" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heur ← ehur · heru · heurr · hheur

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "heur" and "heurté" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heur" is a noun and "heurté" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "heur" or "heurté"?
"heurté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,501 in our French list, against #35,538 for "heur". 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 "heur" and "heurté" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "heur" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "heurté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #136,724 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heur" and "heurté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heur vs heurt". 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 #136,724 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