piquéevspiqueurWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#26,472
“piquée” frequency rank
#44,097
“piqueur” frequency rank
70569
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piquée piqueur
Definition Féminin singulier de piqué. Qui pique, ou qui est susceptible de piquer.

Where the eye mixes piquée and piqueur

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

6 ch
piquée
7 ch
piqueur

Visual trap between piquée and piqueur

A purely visual mix-up. piquée (\pi.ke\) and piqueur (\pi.kœʁ\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70569, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piquée is recorded at frequency rank #26,472, classified as anadj, pronounced \pi.ke\. piqueur is at rank #44,097, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pi.kœʁ\.

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 70569, this pair ranks #50,831 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of piquée vs piqueur

Shared letters: eipqu. Private to "piquée": é. Private to "piqueur": r.

"piquée" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV  ·  "piqueur" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piqueuripqueur · piqeuur · piqqueur · piqueru · piqueurr · piquuer · piuqeur · ppiqueur

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "piquée" and "piqueur" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\pi.ke\ versus \pi.kœʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "piquée" or "piqueur" show up more?
"piquée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,472 in our French list, against #44,097 for "piqueur". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "piquée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piqueur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #50,831 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piquée" and "piqueur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piqués vs piqueur". 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 #50,831 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