pavéesvspavieWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pavées is a adjective, pavie is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#41,952
“pavées” frequency rank
#32,518
“pavie” frequency rank
74470
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pavées pavie
Definition Féminin pluriel de pavé. Sorte de pêche dont la chair est adhérente au noyau.

Where the eye mixes pavées and pavie

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. pavées runs 6 letters (CVCVVC) against pavie's 5 (CVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
pavées
5 ch
pavie

Look-alike desk: pavées vs pavie

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pavées is \pa.ve\ while pavie is \pa.vi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74470, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pavées is recorded at frequency rank #41,952, classified as anadj, pronounced \pa.ve\. pavie is at rank #32,518, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa.vi\.

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 74470, this pair ranks #37,086 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pavées vs pavie

Shared letters: aepv. Private to "pavées": sé. Private to "pavie": i.

"pavées" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "pavie" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pavie ← apvie · paive · pavei · pavvie · ppavie · pvaie

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pavées" and "pavie" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pavées" is an adjective and "pavie" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pavées" or "pavie"?
"pavie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,518 in our French list, against #41,952 for "pavées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pavées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pavie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #37,086 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pavées" and "pavie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pactes vs pavées". 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 #37,086 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