ruinéevsrunnerConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#24,014
“ruinée” frequency rank
#24,015
“runner” frequency rank
48029
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ruinée runner
Definition Féminin singulier de ruiné. Coureur à pied qui pratique le running (axé sur la recherche de la performance).

Where the eye mixes ruinée and runner

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

6 ch
ruinée
6 ch
runner

Visual trap between ruinée and runner

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: ruinée is \ʁɥi.ne\ while runner is \ʁə.nœʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48029, 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\. runner is at rank #24,015, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁə.nœʁ\.

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 48029, this pair ranks #182,200 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ruinée vs runner

Shared letters: enru. Private to "ruinée": . Private to "runner": -.

"ruinée" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "runner" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • runnerrnuner · rrunner · runenr · runer · runnerr · runnre · urnner

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ruinée" and "runner" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ruinée" is an adjective and "runner" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ruinée" vs "runner" - which ranks higher?
"ruinée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,014 in our French list, against #24,015 for "runner". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ruinée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "runner" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #182,200 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ruinée" and "runner" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Rune vs runner". 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 #182,200 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