imposavsimpôtsWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#36,436
“imposa” frequency rank
#2,368
“impôts” frequency rank
38804
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature imposa impôts
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de imposer. Pluriel de impôt.

Where the eye mixes imposa and impôts

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. imposa (VCCVCV) and impôts (VCCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
imposa
6 ch
impôts

Why the eye confuses imposa with impôts

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: imposa is \ɛ̃.po.za\ while impôts is \ɛ̃.po\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 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 38804, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

imposa is recorded at frequency rank #36,436, classified as averb, pronounced \ɛ̃.po.za\. impôts is at rank #2,368, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛ̃.po\.

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 38804, this pair ranks #252,675 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of imposa vs impôts

Shared letters: imps. Private to "imposa": ao. Private to "impôts": .

"imposa" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "impôts" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • imposaimmposa · imopsa · impoas · impossa · impposa · impsoa · ipmosa · miposa

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "imposa" and "impôts" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "imposa" is a verb and "impôts" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "imposa" or "impôts" show up more?
"impôts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,368 in our French list, against #36,436 for "imposa". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "imposa" and "impôts" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "imposa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "impôts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #252,675 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "imposa" and "impôts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "imposa vs imposera". 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 #252,675 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