ruinéevsruinerWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#24,014
“ruinée” frequency rank
#10,938
“ruiner” frequency rank
34952
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ruinée ruiner
Definition Féminin singulier de ruiné. Détruire, transformer en ruine, abattre.

Same sound, different letters: ruinée vs ruiner

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. ruinée (CVVCVV) and ruiner (CVVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
ruinée
6 ch
ruiner

Same sound, different spelling - ruinée / ruiner

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: ruinée and ruiner carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ʁɥi.ne\. 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 34952, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ruinée is recorded at frequency rank #24,014, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁɥi.ne\. ruiner is at rank #10,938, tagged as averb, 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 34952, this pair ranks #280,216 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ruinée vs ruiner

Shared letters: einru. Private to "ruinée": é. Private to "ruiner": -.

"ruinée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "ruiner" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ruiner ← riuner · rruiner · ruienr · ruinerr · ruinner · ruinre · runier

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ruinée" and "ruiner" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ruinée" is an adjective and "ruiner" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ruinée" vs "ruiner" - which ranks higher?
"ruiner" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,938 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.

What to do next

"ruinée" and "ruiner" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ruinée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ruiner" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #280,216 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ruinée" and "ruiner" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ruinée vs Rune". 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 #280,216 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