optvsôtéTell them apart

Which to use

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

#42,502
“opt” frequency rank
#31,318
“ôté” frequency rank
73820
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature opt ôté
Definition Opter. Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe ôter.

Where the eye mixes opt and ôté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch
opt
3 ch
ôté

Visual trap between opt and ôté

A purely visual mix-up. opt (\ɒpt\) and ôté (\o.te\) 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 73820, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

opt is recorded at frequency rank #42,502, classified as averb, pronounced \ɒpt\. ôté is at rank #31,318, tagged as averb, pronounced \o.te\.

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 73820, this pair ranks #39,165 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of opt vs ôté

Shared letters: t. Private to "opt": op. Private to "ôté": éô.

"opt" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "ôté" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "opt" and "ôté" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ɒpt\ versus \o.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "opt" vs "ôté" - which ranks higher?
"ôté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,318 in our French list, against #42,502 for "opt". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "opt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ôté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,165 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "opt" and "ôté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "och vs opt". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #39,165 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