prolongéevsprolongerTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#9,537
“prolongée” frequency rank
#8,016
“prolonger” frequency rank
17553
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature prolongée prolonger
Definition Féminin singulier de prolongé. Faire durer plus longtemps.

Same sound, different letters: prolongée vs prolonger

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters.

9 ch
prolongée
9 ch
prolonger

Homophone desk: prolongée vs prolonger

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: prolongée and prolonger carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pʁɔ.lɔ̃.ʒe\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17553, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

prolongée is recorded at frequency rank #9,537, classified as anadj, pronounced \pʁɔ.lɔ̃.ʒe\. prolonger is at rank #8,016, tagged as averb, pronounced \pʁɔ.lɔ̃.ʒe\.

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 17553, this pair ranks #382,598 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of prolongée vs prolonger

Shared letters: eglnopr. Private to "prolongée": é. Private to "prolonger": -.

"prolongée" · 9 letters · shape CCVCVCCVV  ·  "prolonger" · 9 letters · shape CCVCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • prolongerporlonger · pprolonger · prloonger · prollonger · prolnoger · prologner · prolonegr · prolongerr

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "prolongée" and "prolonger" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "prolongée" is an adjective and "prolonger" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "prolongée" or "prolonger" show up more?
"prolonger" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,016 in our French list, against #9,537 for "prolongée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "prolongée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "prolonger" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #382,598 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "prolongée" and "prolonger" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prolongée vs prolongera". 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 #382,598 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