pagesvspayéeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#1,370
“pages” frequency rank
#8,902
“payée” frequency rank
10272
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pages payée
Definition Pluriel de page. Féminin singulier de payé.

Where the eye mixes pages and payée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pages (CVCVC) and payée (CVVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
pages
5 ch
payée

Look-alike desk: pages vs payée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pages is \paʒ\ while payée is \pɛ.je\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10272, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pages is recorded at frequency rank #1,370, classified as anoun, pronounced \paʒ\. payée is at rank #8,902, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɛ.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 10272, this pair ranks #413,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pages vs payée

Shared letters: aep. Private to "pages": gs. Private to "payée": .

"pages" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "payée" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pagesapges · paegs · pagess · pagges · pagse · pgaes · ppages

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pages" for "payée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pages" is a noun and "payée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pages" or "payée" show up more?
"pages" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,370 in our French list, against #8,902 for "payée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pages" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "payée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #413,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pages" and "payée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "payée vs priée". 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 #413,612 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