noyévsnoyerTell them apart

Which to use

“noyé” and “noyer” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#15,949
“noyé” frequency rank
#9,204
“noyer” frequency rank
25153
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature noyé noyer
Definition Personne qui se noie ou qui a péri par noyade. 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.)

Same sound, different letters: noyé vs noyer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. noyé runs 4 letters (CVVV) against noyer's 5 (CVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
noyé
5 ch
noyer

Ear matches; page differs - noyé and noyer

This is the hard kind. noyé and noyer are pronounced identically (\nwa.je\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25153, 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\. 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 25153, this pair ranks #342,485 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of noyé vs noyer

Shared letters: noy. Private to "noyé": é. Private to "noyer": er.

"noyé" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "noyer" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "noyé" and "noyer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\nwa.je\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "noyé" or "noyer"?
"noyer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,204 in our French list, against #15,949 for "noyé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "noyé" / "noyer". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "noyé" 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 #342,485 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "noyé" and "noyer" 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 #342,485 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