heurtévsheurterTell them apart

Quick tell: heurté is a adjective, heurter is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#18,501
“heurté” frequency rank
#18,768
“heurter” frequency rank
37269
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heurté heurter
Definition 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. Entrer brusquement en contact.

Same sound, different letters: heurté vs heurter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. heurté runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against heurter's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
heurté
7 ch
heurter

Homophone desk: heurté vs heurter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: heurté and heurter carry the same recorded pronunciation, ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37269, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heurté is recorded at frequency rank #18,501, classified as anadj, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\. heurter is at rank #18,768, tagged as averb, 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 37269, this pair ranks #263,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of heurté vs heurter

Shared letters: ehrtu. Private to "heurté": é. Private to "heurter": -.

"heurté" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "heurter" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heurter ← ehurter · heruter · heuretr · heurrter · heurterr · heurtre · heurtter · heutrer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "heurté" and "heurter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heurté" is an adjective and "heurter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "heurté" or "heurter"?
"heurté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,501 in our French list, against #18,768 for "heurter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

"heurté" and "heurter" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "heurté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "heurter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #263,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heurté" and "heurter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heurt vs heurter". 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 #263,674 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