liéevslivreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: liée is a adjective, livre is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“liée” is an adjective and “livre” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,469
“liée” frequency rank
#449
“livre” frequency rank
3918
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature liée livre
Definition Féminin singulier de lié. Assemblage de feuilles manuscrites ou imprimées destinées à être lues.

Where the eye mixes liée and livre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. liée runs 4 letters (CVVV) against livre's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
liée
5 ch
livre

Look-alike desk: liée vs livre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: liée is \lje\ while livre is \livʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3918, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

liée is recorded at frequency rank #3,469, classified as anadj, pronounced \lje\. livre is at rank #449, tagged as anoun, pronounced \livʁ\.

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 3918, this pair ranks #432,897 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of liée vs livre

Shared letters: eil. Private to "liée": é. Private to "livre": rv.

"liée" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "livre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • livreilvre · lirve · liver · livrre · livvre · llivre · lvire

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "liée" and "livre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "liée" is an adjective and "livre" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "liée" or "livre"?
"livre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #449 in our French list, against #3,469 for "liée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "liée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "livre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #432,897 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "liée" and "livre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lep vs liée". 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 #432,897 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