ruinévsruinéeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#13,469
“ruiné” frequency rank
#24,014
“ruinée” frequency rank
37483
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ruiné ruinée
Definition Qui a perdu sa fortune. Féminin singulier de ruiné.

Same sound, different letters: ruiné vs ruinée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. ruiné runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against ruinée's 6 (CVVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
ruiné
6 ch
ruinée

Homophone desk: ruiné vs ruinée

This is the hard kind. ruiné and ruinée are pronounced identically (\ʁɥi.ne\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “ruiné” sits inside “ruinée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37483, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ruiné is recorded at frequency rank #13,469, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁɥi.ne\. ruinée is at rank #24,014, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʁɥi.ne\.

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 37483, this pair ranks #262,189 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ruiné vs ruinée

Shared letters: inrué. Private to "ruiné": -. Private to "ruinée": e.

"ruiné" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "ruinée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ruiné" and "ruinée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ʁɥi.ne\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "ruiné" or "ruinée"?
"ruiné" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,469 in our French list, against #24,014 for "ruinée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "ruiné" / "ruinée". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ruiné" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ruinée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #262,189 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ruiné" and "ruinée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ruinée vs Rune". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #262,189 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