Which to use
“protégé” and “protégés” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,172
- “protégé” frequency rank
- #7,224
- “protégés” frequency rank
- 12396
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | protégé | protégés |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | En parlant des choses, mis à l’abri. | Masculin pluriel de protégé. |
Same sound, different letters: protégé vs protégés
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.
Homophone desk: protégé vs protégés
This is the hard kind. protégé and protégés are pronounced identically (\pʁɔ.te.ʒe\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “protégé” sits inside “protégés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
protégé is recorded at frequency rank #5,172, classified as anadj, pronounced \pʁɔ.te.ʒe\. protégés is at rank #7,224, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pʁɔ.te.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 12396, this pair ranks #405,424 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of protégé vs protégés
Shared letters: goprté. Private to "protégé": -. Private to "protégés": s.
"protégé" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVCV · "protégés" · 8 letters · shape CCVCVCVC
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "protégé" and "protégés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "protégé" or "protégés" show up more?
After this comparison
"protégé" and "protégés" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "protégé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "protégés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #405,424 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "protégé" and "protégés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "protect vs protégé". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #405,424 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.