signavssoignéWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: signa is a verb, soigné is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#30,371
“signa” frequency rank
#10,948
“soigné” frequency rank
41319
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature signa soigné
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de signer. Qui est fait avec soin, où l’on voit du soin.

Letter map: signa vs soigné

Shared letters muted; letters that set signa and soigné apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. signa runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against soigné's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
signa
6 ch
soigné

Role in the sentence - signa and soigné

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: signa is averb and soignéanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41319, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

signa is recorded at frequency rank #30,371, classified as averb, pronounced \si.ɲa\. soigné is at rank #10,948, tagged as anadj.

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 41319, this pair ranks #233,984 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of signa vs soigné

Shared letters: gins. Private to "signa": a. Private to "soigné": oé.

"signa" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "soigné" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • signa ← isgna · sgina · sigan · siggna · signna · singa · ssigna

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "signa" for "soigné" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "signa" is a verb and "soigné" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "signa" or "soigné" show up more?
"soigné" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,948 in our French list, against #30,371 for "signa". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "signa" vs "soigné" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "signa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "soigné" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #233,984 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "signa" and "soigné" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "signa vs sind". 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 #233,984 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