seméevssenseTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#47,039
“semée” frequency rank
#29,539
“sense” frequency rank
76578
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature semée sense
Definition Féminin singulier de semé. Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de sensen.

Where the eye mixes semée and sense

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. semée (CVCVV) and sense (CVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
semée
5 ch
sense

Visual trap between semée and sense

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: semée is \sə.me\ while sense is \ˈzɛnzə\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76578, 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\. sense is at rank #29,539, tagged as averb, pronounced \ˈzɛnzə\.

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 76578, this pair ranks #30,727 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of semée vs sense

Shared letters: es. Private to "semée": mé. Private to "sense": n.

"semée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "sense" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sense ← esnse · senes · sennse · sensse · sesne · snese · ssense

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "semée" and "sense" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "semée" is an adjective and "sense" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "semée" or "sense" show up more?
"sense" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,539 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.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "semée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sense" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #30,727 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "semée" and "sense" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "semée vs semés". 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 #30,727 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