raté vs roe, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“raté” is an adjective and “roe” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,217
“raté” frequency rank: #47,003
“roe” frequency rank: 50220
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	raté	roe
Definition	Qui a raté, qui a échoué, qui n’a pas atteint son but.	Roue.

Letter map: raté vs roe

Shared letters muted; letters that set raté and roe apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

4 ch

raté

3 ch

roe

Role in the sentence - raté and roe

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: raté is anadjective and roeanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50220, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

raté is recorded at frequency rank #3,217, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁa.te\. roe is at rank #47,003, tagged as anoun.

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 50220, this pair ranks #164,349 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of raté vs roe

Shared letters: r. Private to "raté": até. Private to "roe": eo.

"raté" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "roe" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "raté" and "roe" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "raté" is an adjective and "roe" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "raté" vs "roe" - which ranks higher?

"raté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,217 in our French list, against #47,003 for "roe". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "raté" vs "roe" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "raté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "roe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #164,349 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"raté" and "roe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "roe vs roya". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #164,349 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.