pilotéevspiloterTell them apart

Which to use

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

#27,568
“pilotée” frequency rank
#13,863
“piloter” frequency rank
41431
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pilotée piloter
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de piloter. Conduire un bâtiment de mer.

Same sound, different letters: pilotée vs piloter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. pilotée (CVCVCVV) and piloter (CVCVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
pilotée
7 ch
piloter

Same sound, different spelling - pilotée / piloter

This is the hard kind. pilotée and piloter are pronounced identically (\pi.lɔ.te\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41431, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pilotée is recorded at frequency rank #27,568, classified as averb, pronounced \pi.lɔ.te\. piloter is at rank #13,863, tagged as averb, pronounced \pi.lɔ.te\.

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 41431, this pair ranks #233,151 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pilotée vs piloter

Shared letters: eilopt. Private to "pilotée": é. Private to "piloter": r.

"pilotée" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV  ·  "piloter" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piloteriploter · pilloter · piloetr · piloterr · pilotre · pilotter · piltoer · piolter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pilotée" for "piloter" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pi.lɔ.te\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "pilotée" or "piloter" show up more?
"piloter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,863 in our French list, against #27,568 for "pilotée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "pilotée" / "piloter". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pilotée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piloter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #233,151 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pilotée" and "piloter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pillée vs pilotée". 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 #233,151 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