noyévsnoyésConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#15,949
“noyé” frequency rank
#22,352
“noyés” frequency rank
38301
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature noyé noyés
Definition Personne qui se noie ou qui a péri par noyade. Masculin pluriel de noyé.

Same sound, different letters: noyé vs noyés

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

4 ch
noyé
5 ch
noyés

Homophone desk: noyé vs noyés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: noyé and noyés 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 1 extra letter(s) - “noyé” sits inside “noyés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38301, 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\. noyés is at rank #22,352, 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 38301, this pair ranks #256,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of noyé vs noyés

Shared letters: noyé. Private to "noyé": -. Private to "noyés": s.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "noyé" and "noyés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "noyé" is a noun and "noyés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "noyé" or "noyés" show up more?
"noyé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,949 in our French list, against #22,352 for "noyés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "noyé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "noyés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #256,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "noyé" and "noyés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noués vs noyés". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #256,237 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