notrevsnoyéTell them apart

Quick tell: notre is a determiner, noyé is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“notre” is a determiner and “noyé” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#114
“notre” frequency rank
#15,949
“noyé” frequency rank
16063
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature notre noyé
Definition Première personne du pluriel au singulier. Qui nous appartient. Plusieurs possesseurs (dont l’un est le locuteur) et un seul objet. Personne qui se noie ou qui a péri par noyade.

Where the eye mixes notre and noyé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
notre
4 ch
noyé

Visual trap between notre and noyé

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: notre is \nɔtʁ\ while noyé is \nwa.je\. 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 (determiner vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16063, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

notre is recorded at frequency rank #114, classified as adet, pronounced \nɔtʁ\. 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 16063, this pair ranks #389,559 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of notre vs noyé

Shared letters: no. Private to "notre": ert. Private to "noyé": .

"notre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "noyé" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • notrennotre · norte · notrre · nottre · ntore · ontre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "notre" for "noyé" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "notre" is a determiner and "noyé" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "notre" or "noyé" show up more?
"notre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #114 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.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "notre" and "noyé" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "notre" 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 #389,559 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "notre" and "noyé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noués vs noyé". 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 #389,559 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