quatorzième vs XIVe, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#24,347
“quatorzième” frequency rank: #16,273
“XIVe” frequency rank: 40620
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	quatorzième	XIVe
Definition	Adjectif ordinal, correspondant au cardinal quatorze.	Quatorzième.

Same sound, different letters: quatorzième vs XIVe

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters. quatorzième runs 11 letters (CVVCVCCVVCV) against XIVe's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

11 ch

quatorzième

4 ch

XIVe

Homophone desk: quatorzième vs XIVe

This is the hard kind. quatorzième and XIVe are pronounced identically (\ka.tɔʁ.zjɛm\) 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 7 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40620, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

quatorzième is recorded at frequency rank #24,347, classified as anadj, pronounced \ka.tɔʁ.zjɛm\. XIVe is at rank #16,273, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ka.tɔʁ.zjɛm\.

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 40620, this pair ranks #239,190 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of quatorzième vs XIVe

Shared letters: ei. Private to "quatorzième": amoqrtuzè. Private to "XIVe": vx.

"quatorzième" · 11 letters · shape CVVCVCCVVCV · "XIVe" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

XIVe ← ixve · xiev · xivve · xxive

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "quatorzième" and "XIVe" be used interchangeably?

No. They are pronounced the same (\ka.tɔʁ.zjɛm\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

In ordinary French text, does "quatorzième" or "XIVe" show up more?

"XIVe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,273 in our French list, against #24,347 for "quatorzième". 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 "quatorzième" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "XIVe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #239,190 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"quatorzième" and "XIVe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Xavi vs XIVe". 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 #239,190 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.