panelvspayéeWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#14,751
“panel” frequency rank
#8,902
“payée” frequency rank
23653
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature panel payée
Definition Échantillon de population censé être représentatif d’une population globale, en matière d’habitudes de consommation. Féminin singulier de payé.

Where the eye mixes panel and payée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
panel
5 ch
payée

Visual trap between panel and payée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: panel is \pa.nɛl\ 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 23653, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

panel is recorded at frequency rank #14,751, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.nɛl\. 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 23653, this pair ranks #351,217 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of panel vs payée

Shared letters: aep. Private to "panel": ln. Private to "payée": .

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • panelapnel · paenl · panell · panle · pannel · pnael · ppanel

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "panel" and "payée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "panel" is a noun and "payée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "panel" or "payée"?
"payée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,902 in our French list, against #14,751 for "panel". 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 "panel" 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 #351,217 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "panel" and "payée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "panel vs parl". 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 #351,217 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