impliquervsimpliquésWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#9,852
“impliquer” frequency rank
#8,724
“impliqués” frequency rank
18576
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature impliquer impliqués
Definition Envelopper, engager, en parlant d’un crime ou de quelque affaire fâcheuse. Participe passé masculin pluriel de impliquer.

Same sound, different letters: impliquer vs impliqués

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.

9 ch
impliquer
9 ch
impliqués

Homophone desk: impliquer vs impliqués

This is the hard kind. impliquer and impliqués are pronounced identically (\ɛ̃.pli.ke\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18576, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

impliquer is recorded at frequency rank #9,852, classified as averb, pronounced \ɛ̃.pli.ke\. impliqués is at rank #8,724, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɛ̃.pli.ke\.

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 18576, this pair ranks #377,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of impliquer vs impliqués

Shared letters: ilmpqu. Private to "impliquer": er. Private to "impliqués": .

"impliquer" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVCVVC  ·  "impliqués" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • impliquerimlpiquer · immpliquer · impilquer · impliqeur · impliqquer · impliquerr · impliqure · impliuqer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "impliquer" for "impliqués" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɛ̃.pli.ke\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "impliquer" or "impliqués"?
"impliqués" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,724 in our French list, against #9,852 for "impliquer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "impliquer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "impliqués" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #377,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "impliquer" and "impliqués" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "impliqués vs italiques". 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 #377,612 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