listevslistésTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#604
“liste” frequency rank
#37,895
“listés” frequency rank
38499
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature liste listés
Definition Bande, bordure. Participe passé masculin pluriel de lister.

Where the eye mixes liste and listés

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. liste runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against listés's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
liste
6 ch
listés

Visual trap between liste and listés

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: liste is \list\ while listés is \lis.te\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38499, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

liste is recorded at frequency rank #604, classified as anoun, pronounced \list\. listés is at rank #37,895, tagged as averb, pronounced \lis.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 38499, this pair ranks #254,841 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of liste vs listés

Shared letters: ilst. Private to "liste": e. Private to "listés": é.

"liste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "listés" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • listeilste · liset · lisste · listte · litse · lliste · lsite

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "liste" and "listés" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "liste" is a noun and "listés" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "liste" or "listés" show up more?
"liste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #604 in our French list, against #37,895 for "listés". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "liste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "listés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #254,841 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "liste" and "listés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "leste vs listés". 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 #254,841 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