placéevsplacerWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: placée is a adjective, placer is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“placée” is an adjective and “placer” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,787
“placée” frequency rank
#3,351
“placer” frequency rank
8138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature placée placer
Definition Féminin singulier de placé. Situer ; mettre dans un lieu.

Same sound, different letters: placée vs placer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. placée (CCVCVV) and placer (CCVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
placée
6 ch
placer

Ear matches; page differs - placée and placer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: placée and placer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pla.se\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

placée is recorded at frequency rank #4,787, classified as anadj, pronounced \pla.se\. placer is at rank #3,351, tagged as averb, pronounced \pla.se\.

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 8138, this pair ranks #420,989 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of placée vs placer

Shared letters: acelp. Private to "placée": é. Private to "placer": r.

"placée" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV  ·  "placer" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • placer ← lpacer · palcer · placcer · placerr · placre · plaecr · plcaer · pllacer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "placée" and "placer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "placée" is an adjective and "placer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "placée" vs "placer" - which ranks higher?
"placer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,351 in our French list, against #4,787 for "placée". 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 "placée" / "placer". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "placée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "placer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #420,989 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "placée" and "placer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "palaces vs placée". 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 #420,989 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