pieusevspiquéeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“pieuse” and “piquée” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#29,079
“pieuse” frequency rank
#26,472
“piquée” frequency rank
55551
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pieuse piquée
Definition Féminin singulier de pieux. Féminin singulier de piqué.

Where the eye mixes pieuse and piquée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. pieuse (CVVVCV) and piquée (CVCVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
pieuse
6 ch
piquée

Look-alike desk: pieuse vs piquée

A purely visual mix-up. pieuse (\pjøz\) and piquée (\pi.ke\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55551, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pieuse is recorded at frequency rank #29,079, classified as anadj, pronounced \pjøz\. 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 55551, this pair ranks #126,770 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pieuse vs piquée

Shared letters: eipu. Private to "pieuse": s. Private to "piquée": qé.

"pieuse" · 6 letters · shape CVVVCV  ·  "piquée" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pieuse ← ipeuse · peiuse · piesue · pieues · pieusse · piuese · ppieuse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pieuse" and "piquée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\pjøz\ versus \pi.ke\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "pieuse" or "piquée"?
"piquée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,472 in our French list, against #29,079 for "pieuse". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pieuse" 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 #126,770 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pieuse" and "piquée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pieuse vs pieuses". 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 #126,770 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