royavsroyerTell them apart

Which to use

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

#49,922
“roya” frequency rank
#30,787
“royer” frequency rank
80709
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature roya royer
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de royer. Aérer la terre en y creusant des sillons.

Where the eye mixes roya and royer

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
roya
5 ch
royer

Visual trap between roya and royer

A purely visual mix-up. roya (\ʁwa.ja\) and royer (\ʁwa.je\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80709, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

roya is recorded at frequency rank #49,922, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁwa.ja\. royer is at rank #30,787, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁwa.je\.

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 80709, this pair ranks #20,338 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of roya vs royer

Shared letters: ory. Private to "roya": a. Private to "royer": e.

"roya" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "royer" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • royaorya · roay · royya · rroya · ryoa
  • royeroryer · roeyr · royerr · royre · royyer · rroyer · ryoer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "roya" and "royer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ʁwa.ja\ versus \ʁwa.je\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "roya" or "royer"?
"royer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,787 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.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "roya" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "royer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #20,338 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "roya" and "royer" 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 #20,338 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