novsnoyéWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“no” and “noyé” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#1,447
“no” frequency rank
#15,949
“noyé” frequency rank
17396
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature no noyé
Definition Non par un anglophone ou par un pays anglophone. Personne qui se noie ou qui a péri par noyade.

Where the eye mixes no and noyé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. no runs 2 letters (CV) against noyé's 4 (CVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

2 ch
no
4 ch
noyé

Look-alike desk: no vs noyé

A purely visual mix-up. no (\no\) and noyé (\nwa.je\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “no” sits inside “noyé”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #1,447, classified as anoun, pronounced \no\. noyé is at rank #15,949, tagged as anoun, pronounced \nwa.je\.

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 17396, this pair ranks #383,373 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of no vs noyé

Shared letters: no. Private to "no": -. Private to "noyé": yé.

"no" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "noyé" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "no" and "noyé" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\no\ versus \nwa.je\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "no" or "noyé"?
"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,447 in our French list, against #15,949 for "noyé". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "no" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "noyé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #383,373 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "no" and "noyé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noués vs noyé". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #383,373 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