postalevspostéeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#10,553
“postale” frequency rank
#19,947
“postée” frequency rank
30500
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature postale postée
Definition Féminin singulier de postal. Féminin singulier de posté.

Where the eye mixes postale and postée

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

7 ch
postale
6 ch
postée

Why the eye confuses postale with postée

A purely visual mix-up. postale (\pɔs.tal\) and postée (\pɔs.te\) 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 30500, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

postale is recorded at frequency rank #10,553, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɔs.tal\. postée is at rank #19,947, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɔs.te\.

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 30500, this pair ranks #309,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of postale vs postée

Shared letters: eopst. Private to "postale": al. Private to "postée": é.

"postale" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "postée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • postaleopstale · posatle · posstale · postael · postalle · postlae · posttale · potsale

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "postale" and "postée" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɔs.tal\ versus \pɔs.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "postale" vs "postée" - which ranks higher?
"postale" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,553 in our French list, against #19,947 for "postée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "postale" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "postée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #309,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "postale" and "postée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pontet vs postée". 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 #309,911 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