piégéevspiquéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: piégée is a verb, piquée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#19,629
“piégée” frequency rank
#26,472
“piquée” frequency rank
46101
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piégée piquée
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de piéger. Féminin singulier de piqué.

Where the eye mixes piégée and piquée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
piégée
6 ch
piquée

Look-alike desk: piégée vs piquée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: piégée is \pje.ʒe\ while piquée is \pi.ke\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46101, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piégée is recorded at frequency rank #19,629, classified as averb, pronounced \pje.ʒe\. piquée is at rank #26,472, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pi.ke\.

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 46101, this pair ranks #197,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of piégée vs piquée

Shared letters: eipé. Private to "piégée": g. Private to "piquée": qu.

"piégée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "piquée" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "piégée" for "piquée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "piégée" is a verb and "piquée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "piégée" or "piquée"?
"piégée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,629 in our French list, against #26,472 for "piquée". 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 "piégée" and "piquée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "piégée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piquée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #197,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piégée" and "piquée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pillée vs piquée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #197,599 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