notervsnouéeTell them apart

Quick tell: noter is a verb, nouée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“noter” is a verb and “nouée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,842
“noter” frequency rank
#41,930
“nouée” frequency rank
44772
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature noter nouée
Definition Marquer d’un trait dans un livre, dans un écrit. Féminin singulier de noué.

Where the eye mixes noter and nouée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
noter
5 ch
nouée

Why the eye confuses noter with nouée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: noter is \nɔ.te\ while nouée is \nwe\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44772, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

noter is recorded at frequency rank #2,842, classified as averb, pronounced \nɔ.te\. nouée is at rank #41,930, tagged as anadj, pronounced \nwe\.

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 44772, this pair ranks #207,934 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of noter vs nouée

Shared letters: eno. Private to "noter": rt. Private to "nouée": .

"noter" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "nouée" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • noternnoter · noetr · noterr · notter · ntoer · onter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "noter" for "nouée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "noter" is a verb and "nouée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "noter" or "nouée"?
"noter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,842 in our French list, against #41,930 for "nouée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "noter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nouée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #207,934 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "noter" and "nouée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nouée 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 #207,934 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