recrutévsrecrutentWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#10,930
“recruté” frequency rank
#23,339
“recrutent” frequency rank
34269
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature recruté recrutent
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de recruter. Troisième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de recruter.

Where the eye mixes recruté and recrutent

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. recruté runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against recrutent's 9 (CVCCVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
recruté
9 ch
recrutent

Why the eye confuses recruté with recrutent

A purely visual mix-up. recruté (\ʁə.kʁy.te\) and recrutent (\ʁə.kʁyt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34269, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

recruté is recorded at frequency rank #10,930, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁə.kʁy.te\. recrutent is at rank #23,339, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁə.kʁyt\.

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 34269, this pair ranks #285,002 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of recruté vs recrutent

Shared letters: certu. Private to "recruté": é. Private to "recrutent": n.

"recruté" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "recrutent" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • recrutentercrutent · rcerutent · reccrutent · recrrutent · recrtuent · recruetnt · recrutennt · recrutentt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "recruté" for "recrutent" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʁə.kʁy.te\ versus \ʁə.kʁyt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "recruté" vs "recrutent" - which ranks higher?
"recruté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,930 in our French list, against #23,339 for "recrutent". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "recruté" and "recrutent" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "recruté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "recrutent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #285,002 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "recruté" and "recrutent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "recrutent vs recrutons". 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 #285,002 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