nauséevsnavréeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: nausée is a noun, navrée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#20,208
“nausée” frequency rank
#45,752
“navrée” frequency rank
65960
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nausée navrée
Definition Envie de vomir. Féminin singulier de navré.

Where the eye mixes nausée and navrée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
nausée
6 ch
navrée

Visual trap between nausée and navrée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: nausée is \no.ze\ while navrée is \na.vʁe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65960, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nausée is recorded at frequency rank #20,208, classified as anoun, pronounced \no.ze\. navrée is at rank #45,752, tagged as anadj, pronounced \na.vʁe\.

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 65960, this pair ranks #69,969 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of nausée vs navrée

Shared letters: aené. Private to "nausée": su. Private to "navrée": rv.

"nausée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "navrée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "nausée" and "navrée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nausée" is a noun and "navrée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "nausée" vs "navrée" - which ranks higher?
"nausée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,208 in our French list, against #45,752 for "navrée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "nausée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "navrée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,969 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nausée" and "navrée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "navet vs navrée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #69,969 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