notéevsnoyerWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#25,060
“notée” frequency rank
#9,204
“noyer” frequency rank
34264
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature notée noyer
Definition Féminin singulier de noté. Nom usuel des arbres du genre Juglans, Grands arbres à feuilles caduques alternes imparipennées, aux petites fleurs femelles verdâtres réunies par deux à quatre et donnant des noix (drupes indéhiscentes). (note : Utilisé seul, en Europe francophone, le mot noyer désigne généralement Juglans regia ou noyer commun, noyer royal.)

Where the eye mixes notée and noyer

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. notée (CVCVV) and noyer (CVVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
notée
5 ch
noyer

Visual trap between notée and noyer

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: notée is \nɔ.te\ while noyer is \nwa.je\. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34264, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

notée is recorded at frequency rank #25,060, classified as anadj, pronounced \nɔ.te\. noyer is at rank #9,204, 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 34264, this pair ranks #285,035 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of notée vs noyer

Shared letters: eno. Private to "notée": té. Private to "noyer": ry.

"notée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "noyer" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • noyer ← nnoyer · noeyr · noyerr · noyre · noyyer · nyoer · onyer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "notée" for "noyer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "notée" is an adjective and "noyer" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "notée" or "noyer"?
"noyer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,204 in our French list, against #25,060 for "notée". 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 "notée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "noyer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #285,035 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "notée" and "noyer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "notée vs noués". 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 #285,035 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