Which to use
“indirect” and “indirecte” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #14,059
- “indirect” frequency rank
- #16,912
- “indirecte” frequency rank
- 30971
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | indirect | indirecte |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui ne conduit pas au but directement, qui est détourné. | Féminin singulier de indirect. |
Same sound, different letters: indirect vs indirecte
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters.
Same sound, different spelling - indirect / indirecte
This is the hard kind. indirect and indirecte are pronounced identically (\ɛ̃.di.ʁɛkt\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “indirect” sits inside “indirecte”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30971, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
indirect is recorded at frequency rank #14,059, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.di.ʁɛkt\. indirecte is at rank #16,912, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.di.ʁɛkt\.
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 30971, this pair ranks #306,827 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of indirect vs indirecte
Shared letters: cdeinrt. Private to "indirect": -. Private to "indirecte": -.
"indirect" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVCC · "indirecte" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "indirect" for "indirecte" ever safe?
Frequency check: "indirect" vs "indirecte" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
You've separated the homophone pair "indirect" / "indirecte". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "indirect" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "indirecte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #306,827 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "indirect" and "indirecte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "indigeste vs indirecte". 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 #306,827 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.