piècevspiégésWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pièce is a noun, piégés is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pièce” is a noun and “piégés” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#852
“pièce” frequency rank
#25,767
“piégés” frequency rank
26619
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pièce piégés
Definition Chacun des éléments d’un ensemble défini. → voir pièce détachée, de toutes pièces, juger sur pièces, pièce à pièce et pièce par pièce Participe passé masculin pluriel de piéger.

Where the eye mixes pièce and piégés

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. pièce runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against piégés's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
pièce
6 ch
piégés

Visual trap between pièce and piégés

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pièce is \pjɛs\ while piégés is \pje.ʒe\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26619, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pièce is recorded at frequency rank #852, classified as anoun, pronounced \pjɛs\. piégés is at rank #25,767, tagged as averb, pronounced \pje.ʒe\.

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 26619, this pair ranks #333,853 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pièce vs piégés

Shared letters: ip. Private to "pièce": ceè. Private to "piégés": gsé.

"pièce" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "piégés" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pièce" for "piégés" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pièce" is a noun and "piégés" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pièce" vs "piégés" - which ranks higher?
"pièce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #852 in our French list, against #25,767 for "piégés". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pièce" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piégés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #333,853 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pièce" and "piégés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piégés vs pieuses". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #333,853 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