piquantevspiquantsConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#33,835
“piquante” frequency rank
#48,718
“piquants” frequency rank
82553
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piquante piquants
Definition Féminin singulier de piquant. Masculin pluriel de piquant.

Where the eye mixes piquante and piquants

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. piquante (CVCVVCCV) and piquants (CVCVVCCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

8 ch
piquante
8 ch
piquants

Look-alike desk: piquante vs piquants

A purely visual mix-up. piquante (\pi.kɑ̃t\) and piquants (\pi.kɑ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - e in “piquante” becomes s in “piquants”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82553, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piquante is recorded at frequency rank #33,835, classified as anadj, pronounced \pi.kɑ̃t\. piquants is at rank #48,718, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pi.kɑ̃\.

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 82553, this pair ranks #16,510 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of piquante vs piquants

Shared letters: ainpqtu. Private to "piquante": e. Private to "piquants": s.

"piquante" · 8 letters · shape CVCVVCCV  ·  "piquants" · 8 letters · shape CVCVVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piquanteipquante · piqaunte · piqquante · piquanet · piquannte · piquantte · piquatne · piqunate
  • piquantsipquants · piqaunts · piqquants · piquannts · piquanst · piquantss · piquantts · piquatns

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "piquante" and "piquants" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pi.kɑ̃t\ versus \pi.kɑ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "piquante" vs "piquants" - which ranks higher?
"piquante" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,835 in our French list, against #48,718 for "piquants". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "piquante" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piquants" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,510 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piquante" and "piquants" 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 #16,510 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