lavesvslésésWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#26,781
“laves” frequency rank
#36,943
“lésés” frequency rank
63724
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature laves lésés
Definition Pluriel de lave. Participe passé masculin pluriel de léser.

Where the eye mixes laves and lésés

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
laves
5 ch
lésés

Visual trap between laves and lésés

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: laves is \lav\ while lésés is \le.ze\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63724, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

laves is recorded at frequency rank #26,781, classified as anoun, pronounced \lav\. lésés is at rank #36,943, tagged as averb, pronounced \le.ze\.

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 63724, this pair ranks #80,517 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of laves vs lésés

Shared letters: ls. Private to "laves": aev. Private to "lésés": é.

"laves" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "lésés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • laveslaevs · lavess · lavse · lavves · llaves · lvaes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "laves" and "lésés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "laves" is a noun and "lésés" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "laves" vs "lésés" - which ranks higher?
"laves" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,781 in our French list, against #36,943 for "lésés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "laves" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lésés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #80,517 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "laves" and "lésés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lésés vs leste". 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 #80,517 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