ôtévsoyezWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#31,318
“ôté” frequency rank
#39,920
“oyez” frequency rank
71238
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ôté oyez
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe ôter. Deuxième personne de l’indicatif présent du verbe ouïr.

Where the eye mixes ôté and oyez

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. No shared run - shape, not overlap, is the trap. ôté runs 3 letters (VCV) against oyez's 4 (VVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ôté
4 ch
oyez

Visual trap between ôté and oyez

A purely visual mix-up. ôté (\o.te\) and oyez (\ɔ.je\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71238, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ôté is recorded at frequency rank #31,318, classified as averb, pronounced \o.te\. oyez is at rank #39,920, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɔ.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 71238, this pair ranks #48,314 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ôté vs oyez

Shared letters: none. Private to "ôté": téô. Private to "oyez": eoyz.

"ôté" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "oyez" · 4 letters · shape VVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • oyez ← oeyz · oyezz · oyyez · oyze · yoez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ôté" for "oyez" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\o.te\ versus \ɔ.je\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "ôté" vs "oyez" - which ranks higher?
"ôté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,318 in our French list, against #39,920 for "oyez". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ôté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "oyez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,314 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ôté" and "oyez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ones vs oyez". 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 #48,314 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