salairevssalariéeConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#2,150
“salaire” frequency rank
#26,867
“salariée” frequency rank
29017
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature salaire salariée
Definition Rémunération pour un travail. Femme salariée.

Where the eye mixes salaire and salariée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

7 ch
salaire
8 ch
salariée

Visual trap between salaire and salariée

A purely visual mix-up. salaire (\sa.lɛʁ\) and salariée (\sa.la.ʁje\) 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 29017, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

salaire is recorded at frequency rank #2,150, classified as anoun, pronounced \sa.lɛʁ\. salariée is at rank #26,867, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sa.la.ʁje\.

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 29017, this pair ranks #319,251 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of salaire vs salariée

Shared letters: aeilrs. Private to "salaire": -. Private to "salariée": é.

"salaire" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCV  ·  "salariée" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • salaireaslaire · saalire · salaier · salairre · salarie · saliare · sallaire · slaaire

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "salaire" for "salariée" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\sa.lɛʁ\ versus \sa.la.ʁje\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "salaire" or "salariée" show up more?
"salaire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,150 in our French list, against #26,867 for "salariée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "salaire" and "salariée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "salaire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "salariée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #319,251 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "salaire" and "salariée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "salariée vs salariées". 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 #319,251 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