sautévssautezTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#8,780
“sauté” frequency rank
#46,437
“sautez” frequency rank
55217
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sauté sautez
Definition Qu’on a fait sauter dans une poêle. Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de sauter.

Same sound, different letters: sauté vs sautez

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. sauté runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against sautez's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
sauté
6 ch
sautez

Homophone desk: sauté vs sautez

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: sauté and sautez carry the same recorded pronunciation, \so.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55217, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sauté is recorded at frequency rank #8,780, classified as anadj, pronounced \so.te\. sautez is at rank #46,437, tagged as averb, pronounced \so.te\.

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 55217, this pair ranks #128,893 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sauté vs sautez

Shared letters: astu. Private to "sauté": é. Private to "sautez": ez.

"sauté" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "sautez" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sautez ← asutez · satuez · sauetz · sautezz · sauttez · sautze · ssautez · suatez

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "sauté" and "sautez" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sauté" is an adjective and "sautez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "sauté" or "sautez"?
"sauté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,780 in our French list, against #46,437 for "sautez". 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 "sauté" / "sautez". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sauté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sautez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #128,893 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sauté" and "sautez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sauber vs sautez". 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 #128,893 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