irritévsirriterWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#23,258
“irrité” frequency rank
#37,391
“irriter” frequency rank
60649
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature irrité irriter
Definition De mauvaise humeur à cause de quelque chose. Mettre en colère, provoquer l'agacement, la contrariété, l'impatience de quelqu’un.

Same sound, different letters: irrité vs irriter

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

6 ch
irrité
7 ch
irriter

Same sound, different spelling - irrité / irriter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: irrité and irriter carry the same recorded pronunciation, \i.ʁi.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 60649, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

irrité is recorded at frequency rank #23,258, classified as anadj, pronounced \i.ʁi.te\. irriter is at rank #37,391, tagged as averb, pronounced \i.ʁi.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 60649, this pair ranks #96,533 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of irrité vs irriter

Shared letters: irt. Private to "irrité": é. Private to "irriter": e.

"irrité" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "irriter" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • irriter ← irirter · iriter · irrietr · irriterr · irritre · irritter · irrtier · ririter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "irrité" for "irriter" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "irrité" is an adjective and "irriter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "irrité" vs "irriter" - which ranks higher?
"irrité" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,258 in our French list, against #37,391 for "irriter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "irrité" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "irriter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #96,533 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "irrité" and "irriter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "irriguer vs irriter". 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 #96,533 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