occasevsoccupéTell them apart

Which to use

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

#44,070
“occase” frequency rank
#3,025
“occupé” frequency rank
47095
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature occase occupé
Definition → voir amplitude occase. (Employé uniquement dans cette locution). Où l’on a de l’occupation.

Where the eye mixes occase and occupé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. occase and occupé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
occase
6 ch
occupé

Why the eye confuses occase with occupé

A purely visual mix-up. occase (\o.kaz\) and occupé (\ɔ.ky.pe\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47095, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

occase is recorded at frequency rank #44,070, classified as anadj, pronounced \o.kaz\. occupé is at rank #3,025, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɔ.ky.pe\.

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 47095, this pair ranks #189,689 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of occase vs occupé

Shared letters: co. Private to "occase": aes. Private to "occupé": pué.

"occase" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "occupé" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • occase ← ocacse · ocase · occaes · occsae

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "occase" and "occupé" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\o.kaz\ versus \ɔ.ky.pe\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "occase" or "occupé" show up more?
"occupé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,025 in our French list, against #44,070 for "occase". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "occase" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "occupé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #189,689 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "occase" and "occupé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "occase vs occaz". 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 #189,689 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