seméevssemésTell them apart

Which to use

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

#47,039
“semée” frequency rank
#45,869
“semés” frequency rank
92908
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature semée semés
Definition Féminin singulier de semé. Masculin pluriel de semé.

Same sound, different letters: semée vs semés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. semée (CVCVV) and semés (CVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
semée
5 ch
semés

Homophone desk: semée vs semés

This is the hard kind. semée and semés are pronounced identically (\sə.me\) 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 a single letter - e in “semée” becomes s in “semés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 92908, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

semée is recorded at frequency rank #47,039, classified as anadj, pronounced \sə.me\. semés is at rank #45,869, tagged as anadj, pronounced \sə.me\.

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 92908, this pair ranks #2,663 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of semée vs semés

Shared letters: emsé. Private to "semée": -. Private to "semés": -.

"semée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "semés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "semée" and "semés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\sə.me\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "semée" vs "semés" - which ranks higher?
"semés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45,869 in our French list, against #47,039 for "semée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "semée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "semés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #2,663 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "semée" and "semés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "semés vs sémites". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #2,663 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