stoppéevsstopperWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#35,294
“stoppée” frequency rank
#8,468
“stopper” frequency rank
43762
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature stoppée stopper
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de stopper. Arrêter, en parlant d’un navire à moteur, d’un train, d’une machine.

Same sound, different letters: stoppée vs stopper

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. stoppée (CCVCCVV) and stopper (CCVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
stoppée
7 ch
stopper

Same sound, different spelling - stoppée / stopper

This is the hard kind. stoppée and stopper are pronounced identically (\stɔ.pe\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43762, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

stoppée is recorded at frequency rank #35,294, classified as averb, pronounced \stɔ.pe\. stopper is at rank #8,468, tagged as averb, pronounced \stɔ.pe\.

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 43762, this pair ranks #215,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of stoppée vs stopper

Shared letters: eopst. Private to "stoppée": é. Private to "stopper": r.

"stoppée" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVV  ·  "stopper" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • stopper ← sotpper · sstopper · stopepr · stoper · stopperr · stoppre · stpoper · sttopper

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "stoppée" and "stopper" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\stɔ.pe\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "stoppée" or "stopper" show up more?
"stopper" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,468 in our French list, against #35,294 for "stoppée". 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 "stoppée" / "stopper". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "stoppée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "stopper" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #215,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "stoppée" and "stopper" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "steppe vs stoppée". 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 #215,621 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