Which to use
“pique” and “piquets” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,061
- “pique” frequency rank
- #32,957
- “piquets” frequency rank
- 38018
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | pique | piquets |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Sorte d’arme formée d’un long bois dont le bout est garni d’un fer plat et pointu. | Pluriel de piquet. |
Where the eye mixes pique and piquets
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. pique runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against piquets's 7 (CVCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between pique and piquets
A purely visual mix-up. pique (\pik\) and piquets (\pi.kɛ\) 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 2 extra letter(s) - “pique” sits inside “piquets”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38018, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
pique is recorded at frequency rank #5,061, classified as anoun, pronounced \pik\. piquets is at rank #32,957, 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 38018, this pair ranks #258,295 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of pique vs piquets
Shared letters: eipqu. Private to "pique": -. Private to "piquets": st.
"pique" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV · "piquets" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "pique" and "piquets" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "pique" or "piquets" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "pique" and "piquets" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "pique" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "piquets" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #258,295 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "pique" and "piquets" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piquants vs piquets". 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 #258,295 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.