prêtéevspreuveWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: prêtée is a adjective, preuve is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“prêtée” is an adjective and “preuve” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,853
“prêtée” frequency rank
#950
“preuve” frequency rank
34803
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature prêtée preuve
Definition Féminin singulier de prêté. Ce qui établit la véracité d’une proposition ou d’un fait.

Where the eye mixes prêtée and preuve

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. prêtée (CCVCVV) and preuve (CCVVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
prêtée
6 ch
preuve

Look-alike desk: prêtée vs preuve

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: prêtée is \pʁɛ.te\ while preuve is \pʁœv\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34803, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

prêtée is recorded at frequency rank #33,853, classified as anadj, pronounced \pʁɛ.te\. preuve is at rank #950, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pʁœv\.

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 34803, this pair ranks #281,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of prêtée vs preuve

Shared letters: epr. Private to "prêtée": téê. Private to "preuve": uv.

"prêtée" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV  ·  "preuve" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • preuve ← peruve · ppreuve · preuev · preuvve · prevue · prreuve · prueve · rpeuve

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "prêtée" and "preuve" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "prêtée" is an adjective and "preuve" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "prêtée" or "preuve"?
"preuve" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #950 in our French list, against #33,853 for "prêtée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "prêtée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "preuve" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #281,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "prêtée" and "preuve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prêtée vs priée". 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 #281,255 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