racontervsracontésWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#2,794
“raconter” frequency rank
#47,547
“racontés” frequency rank
50341
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature raconter racontés
Definition Faire le récit d’une histoire vraie ou imaginaire. Participe passé masculin pluriel de raconter.

Same sound, different letters: raconter vs racontés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. raconter and racontés follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
raconter
8 ch
racontés

Same sound, different spelling - raconter / racontés

This is the hard kind. raconter and racontés are pronounced identically (\ʁa.kɔ̃.te\) 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50341, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

raconter is recorded at frequency rank #2,794, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁa.kɔ̃.te\. racontés is at rank #47,547, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁa.kɔ̃.te\.

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 50341, this pair ranks #163,402 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of raconter vs racontés

Shared letters: acnort. Private to "raconter": e. Private to "racontés": sé.

"raconter" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC  ·  "racontés" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • raconter ← arconter · racconter · racnoter · raconetr · raconnter · raconterr · racontre · racontter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "raconter" for "racontés" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ʁa.kɔ̃.te\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "raconter" or "racontés"?
"raconter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,794 in our French list, against #47,547 for "racontés". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

"raconter" and "racontés" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "raconter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "racontés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #163,402 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "raconter" and "racontés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "racontais vs racontés". 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 #163,402 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