occupéesvsoccuperWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: occupées is a adjective, occuper is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“occupées” is an adjective and “occuper” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,196
“occupées” frequency rank
#2,091
“occuper” frequency rank
18287
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature occupées occuper
Definition Féminin pluriel de occupé. Prendre possession de ; conserver en sa possession.

Same sound, different letters: occupées vs occuper

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. occupées runs 8 letters (VCCVCVVC) against occuper's 7 (VCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
occupées
7 ch
occuper

Ear matches; page differs - occupées and occuper

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: occupées and occuper carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ɔ.ky.pe\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18287, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

occupées is recorded at frequency rank #16,196, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɔ.ky.pe\. occuper is at rank #2,091, tagged as averb, 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 18287, this pair ranks #379,107 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of occupées vs occuper

Shared letters: ceopu. Private to "occupées": sé. Private to "occuper": r.

"occupées" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVVC  ·  "occuper" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • occuper ← cocuper · occpuer · occuepr · occuperr · occupper · occupre · ocucper · ocuper

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "occupées" and "occuper" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "occupées" is an adjective and "occuper" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "occupées" or "occuper"?
"occuper" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,091 in our French list, against #16,196 for "occupées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "occupées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "occuper" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #379,107 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "occupées" and "occuper" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "occupais vs occupées". 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 #379,107 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