souhaitéevssouhaitsTell them apart

Quick tell: souhaitée is a verb, souhaits is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“souhaitée” is a verb and “souhaits” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,858
“souhaitée” frequency rank
#15,258
“souhaits” frequency rank
36116
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature souhaitée souhaits
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de souhaiter. Pluriel de souhait.

Where the eye mixes souhaitée and souhaits

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. souhaitée runs 9 letters (CVVCVVCVV) against souhaits's 8 (CVVCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
souhaitée
8 ch
souhaits

Why the eye confuses souhaitée with souhaits

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: souhaitée is \swɛ.te\ while souhaits is \swɛ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36116, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

souhaitée is recorded at frequency rank #20,858, classified as averb, pronounced \swɛ.te\. souhaits is at rank #15,258, tagged as anoun, pronounced \swɛ\.

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 36116, this pair ranks #271,891 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of souhaitée vs souhaits

Shared letters: ahiostu. Private to "souhaitée": . Private to "souhaits": -.

"souhaitée" · 9 letters · shape CVVCVVCVV  ·  "souhaits" · 8 letters · shape CVVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • souhaitsosuhaits · sohuaits · souahits · souhaist · souhaitss · souhaitts · souhatis · souhhaits

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "souhaitée" for "souhaits" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "souhaitée" is a verb and "souhaits" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "souhaitée" or "souhaits" show up more?
"souhaits" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,258 in our French list, against #20,858 for "souhaitée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "souhaitée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "souhaits" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #271,891 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "souhaitée" and "souhaits" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "souhaitais vs souhaits". 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 #271,891 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