roevsroyaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: roe is a noun, roya is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#47,003
“roe” frequency rank
#49,922
“roya” frequency rank
96925
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature roe roya
Definition Roue. Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de royer.

Letter map: roe vs roya

Shared letters muted; letters that set roe and roya apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. roe runs 3 letters (CVV) against roya's 4 (CVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
roe
4 ch
roya

Grammar separator: roe vs roya

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: roe is anoun and royaaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 96925, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

roe is recorded at frequency rank #47,003, classified as anoun. roya is at rank #49,922, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁwa.ja\.

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 96925, this pair ranks #517 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of roe vs roya

Shared letters: or. Private to "roe": e. Private to "roya": ay.

"roe" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "roya" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • roya ← orya · roay · royya · rroya · ryoa

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "roe" and "roya" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "roe" is a noun and "roya" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "roe" or "roya" show up more?
"roe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47,003 in our French list, against #49,922 for "roya". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "roe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "roya" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #517 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "roe" and "roya" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Rhys vs roya". 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 #517 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