quittaientvsquittaitWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#40,947
“quittaient” frequency rank
#19,641
“quittait” frequency rank
60588
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature quittaient quittait
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de l’indicatif du verbe quitter. Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif du verbe quitter.

Same sound, different letters: quittaient vs quittait

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. quittaient runs 10 letters (CVVCCVVVCC) against quittait's 8 (CVVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

10 ch
quittaient
8 ch
quittait

Ear matches; page differs - quittaient and quittait

This is the hard kind. quittaient and quittait are pronounced identically (\ki.tɛ\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60588, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

quittaient is recorded at frequency rank #40,947, classified as averb, pronounced \ki.tɛ\. quittait is at rank #19,641, tagged as averb, pronounced \ki.tɛ\.

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 60588, this pair ranks #96,848 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of quittaient vs quittait

Shared letters: aiqtu. Private to "quittaient": en. Private to "quittait": -.

"quittaient" · 10 letters · shape CVVCCVVVCC  ·  "quittait" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • quittaient ← qiuttaient · qquittaient · quitaient · quitatient · quittaeint · quittaiennt · quittaientt · quittaietn
  • quittait ← qiuttait · qquittait · quitait · quitatit · quittaitt · quittati · quittiat · qutitait

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "quittaient" and "quittait" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ki.tɛ\), 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 "quittaient" or "quittait" show up more?
"quittait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,641 in our French list, against #40,947 for "quittaient". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "quittaient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "quittait" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #96,848 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "quittaient" and "quittait" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "quittaient vs quittèrent". 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 #96,848 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