piquaitvspiquetTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#46,353
“piquait” frequency rank
#24,718
“piquet” frequency rank
71071
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piquait piquet
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de piquer. Petit pieu que l’on fiche en terre pour tendre et arrêter les cordes des tentes, des pavillons.

Same sound, different letters: piquait vs piquet

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. piquait runs 7 letters (CVCVVVC) against piquet's 6 (CVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
piquait
6 ch
piquet

Same sound, different spelling - piquait / piquet

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: piquait and piquet carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pi.kɛ\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anoun, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71071, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piquait is recorded at frequency rank #46,353, classified as averb, pronounced \pi.kɛ\. piquet is at rank #24,718, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pi.kɛ\.

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 71071, this pair ranks #48,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of piquait vs piquet

Shared letters: ipqtu. Private to "piquait": a. Private to "piquet": e.

"piquait" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVVC  ·  "piquet" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piquaitipquait · piqauit · piqquait · piquaitt · piquati · piquiat · piuqait · ppiquait
  • piquetipquet · piqeut · piqquet · piquett · piqute · piuqet · ppiquet · pqiuet

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "piquait" and "piquet" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "piquait" is a verb and "piquet" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "piquait" or "piquet"?
"piquet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,718 in our French list, against #46,353 for "piquait". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "piquait" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piquet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piquait" and "piquet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piquait vs piquants". 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 #48,911 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