noyévsnoyéesWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#15,949
“noyé” frequency rank
#43,035
“noyées” frequency rank
58984
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature noyé noyées
Definition Personne qui se noie ou qui a péri par noyade. Féminin pluriel de noyé.

Same sound, different letters: noyé vs noyées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. noyé runs 4 letters (CVVV) against noyées's 6 (CVVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
noyé
6 ch
noyées

Homophone desk: noyé vs noyées

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: noyé and noyées carry the same recorded pronunciation, \nwa.je\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “noyé” sits inside “noyées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58984, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

noyé is recorded at frequency rank #15,949, classified as anoun, pronounced \nwa.je\. noyées is at rank #43,035, tagged as anadj, 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 58984, this pair ranks #105,755 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of noyé vs noyées

Shared letters: noyé. Private to "noyé": -. Private to "noyées": es.

"noyé" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "noyées" · 6 letters · shape CVVVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "noyé" and "noyées" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "noyé" is a noun and "noyées" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "noyé" vs "noyées" - which ranks higher?
"noyé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,949 in our French list, against #43,035 for "noyées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"noyé" and "noyées" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "noyé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "noyées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #105,755 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "noyé" and "noyées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noués vs noyées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #105,755 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