priméevspromueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: primée is a verb, promue is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#45,245
“primée” frequency rank
#31,194
“promue” frequency rank
76439
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature primée promue
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de primer. Féminin singulier de promu.

Where the eye mixes primée and promue

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. primée and promue follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
primée
6 ch
promue

Visual trap between primée and promue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: primée is \pʁi.me\ while promue is \pʁɔ.my\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76439, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

primée is recorded at frequency rank #45,245, classified as averb, pronounced \pʁi.me\. promue is at rank #31,194, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pʁɔ.my\.

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 76439, this pair ranks #31,145 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of primée vs promue

Shared letters: empr. Private to "primée": ié. Private to "promue": ou.

"primée" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV  ·  "promue" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • promue ← pormue · ppromue · prmoue · promeu · prommue · proume · prromue · rpomue

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "primée" for "promue" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "primée" is a verb and "promue" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "primée" or "promue"?
"promue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,194 in our French list, against #45,245 for "primée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "primée" and "promue" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "primée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "promue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #31,145 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "primée" and "promue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "priée vs primée". 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 #31,145 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