restauvsrestéeTell them apart

Quick tell: restau is a noun, restée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#17,805
“restau” frequency rank
#5,073
“restée” frequency rank
22878
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature restau restée
Definition Restaurant. Féminin singulier de resté.

Where the eye mixes restau and restée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
restau
6 ch
restée

Look-alike desk: restau vs restée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: restau is \ʁɛs.to\ while restée is \ʁɛs.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22878, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

restau is recorded at frequency rank #17,805, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʁɛs.to\. restée is at rank #5,073, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʁɛs.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 22878, this pair ranks #355,624 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of restau vs restée

Shared letters: erst. Private to "restau": au. Private to "restée": é.

"restau" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "restée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • restauerstau · resatu · resstau · resttau · restua · retsau · rrestau · rsetau

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "restau" and "restée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "restau" is a noun and "restée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "restau" or "restée"?
"restée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,073 in our French list, against #17,805 for "restau". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "restau" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "restée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #355,624 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "restau" and "restée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "rasta vs restau". 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 #355,624 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