poignardévspoignarderTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#18,283
“poignardé” frequency rank
#30,744
“poignarder” frequency rank
49027
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature poignardé poignarder
Definition Qui a été victime d’un coup de poignard. Frapper, blesser ou tuer avec un poignard.

Same sound, different letters: poignardé vs poignarder

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. poignardé runs 9 letters (CVVCCVCCV) against poignarder's 10 (CVVCCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
poignardé
10 ch
poignarder

Homophone desk: poignardé vs poignarder

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: poignardé and poignarder carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pwa.ɲaʁ.de\. 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 49027, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

poignardé is recorded at frequency rank #18,283, classified as anadj, pronounced \pwa.ɲaʁ.de\. poignarder is at rank #30,744, tagged as averb, pronounced \pwa.ɲaʁ.de\.

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 49027, this pair ranks #174,064 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of poignardé vs poignarder

Shared letters: adginopr. Private to "poignardé": é. Private to "poignarder": e.

"poignardé" · 9 letters · shape CVVCCVCCV  ·  "poignarder" · 10 letters · shape CVVCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poignarderopignarder · piognarder · poginarder · poiganrder · poiggnarder · poignadrer · poignardder · poignarderr

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "poignardé" for "poignarder" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "poignardé" is an adjective and "poignarder" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "poignardé" or "poignarder" show up more?
"poignardé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,283 in our French list, against #30,744 for "poignarder". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "poignardé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "poignarder" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #174,064 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "poignardé" and "poignarder" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "poignarder vs poignards". 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 #174,064 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