refuséevsrefusezWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: refusée is a adjective, refusez is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“refusée” is an adjective and “refusez” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,896
“refusée” frequency rank
#28,714
“refusez” frequency rank
42610
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature refusée refusez
Definition Féminin singulier de refusé. Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de refuser.

Same sound, different letters: refusée vs refusez

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
refusée
7 ch
refusez

Ear matches; page differs - refusée and refusez

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: refusée and refusez carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ʁə.fy.ze\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42610, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

refusée is recorded at frequency rank #13,896, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁə.fy.ze\. refusez is at rank #28,714, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁə.fy.ze\.

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 42610, this pair ranks #224,318 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of refusée vs refusez

Shared letters: efrsu. Private to "refusée": é. Private to "refusez": z.

"refusée" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV  ·  "refusez" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • refusezerfusez · reffusez · refsuez · refuesz · refusezz · refussez · refusze · reufsez

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "refusée" and "refusez" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "refusée" is an adjective and "refusez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "refusée" or "refusez" show up more?
"refusée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,896 in our French list, against #28,714 for "refusez". 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 "refusée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "refusez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #224,318 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "refusée" and "refusez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "réduisez vs refusez". 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 #224,318 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