plaquévsplaquerWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#16,210
“plaqué” frequency rank
#23,646
“plaquer” frequency rank
39856
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature plaqué plaquer
Definition Mis à plat. Appliquer une chose sur une autre.

Same sound, different letters: plaqué vs plaquer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters.

6 ch
plaqué
7 ch
plaquer

Ear matches; page differs - plaqué and plaquer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: plaqué and plaquer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pla.ke\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, 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 39856, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

plaqué is recorded at frequency rank #16,210, classified as anadj, pronounced \pla.ke\. plaquer is at rank #23,646, tagged as averb, pronounced \pla.ke\.

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 39856, this pair ranks #244,862 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of plaqué vs plaquer

Shared letters: alpqu. Private to "plaqué": é. Private to "plaquer": er.

"plaqué" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV  ·  "plaquer" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • plaquerlpaquer · palquer · plaqeur · plaqquer · plaquerr · plaqure · plauqer · pllaquer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "plaqué" for "plaquer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "plaqué" is an adjective and "plaquer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "plaqué" or "plaquer" show up more?
"plaqué" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,210 in our French list, against #23,646 for "plaquer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "plaqué" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "plaquer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #244,862 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "plaqué" and "plaquer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "planqués vs plaquer". 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 #244,862 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