passéesvspasseraWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#5,057
“passées” frequency rank
#4,265
“passera” frequency rank
9322
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature passées passera
Definition Féminin pluriel de passé. Troisième personne du singulier du futur de passer.

Where the eye mixes passées and passera

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. passées (CVCCVVC) and passera (CVCCVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
passées
7 ch
passera

Visual trap between passées and passera

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: passées is \pa.se\ while passera is \pa.sə.ʁa\. 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 (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9322, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passées is recorded at frequency rank #5,057, classified as anadj, pronounced \pa.se\. passera is at rank #4,265, tagged as averb, pronounced \pa.sə.ʁa\.

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 9322, this pair ranks #417,077 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of passées vs passera

Shared letters: aeps. Private to "passées": é. Private to "passera": r.

"passées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "passera" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • passera ← apssera · pasera · pasesra · passear · passerra · passrea · ppassera · psasera

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "passées" and "passera" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "passées" is an adjective and "passera" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "passées" or "passera" show up more?
"passera" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,265 in our French list, against #5,057 for "passées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "passées" and "passera" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "passées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "passera" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #417,077 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "passées" and "passera" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "passées vs pressées". 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 #417,077 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