tairevstapéConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#5,298
“taire” frequency rank
#10,956
“tapé” frequency rank
16254
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature taire tapé
Definition Ne pas dire ; passer sous silence. Se dit particulièrement de certains fruits aplatis et séchés au four.

Where the eye mixes taire and tapé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
taire
4 ch
tapé

Visual trap between taire and tapé

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: taire is \tɛʁ\ while tapé is \ta.pe\. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16254, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

taire is recorded at frequency rank #5,298, classified as averb, pronounced \tɛʁ\. tapé is at rank #10,956, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ta.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 16254, this pair ranks #388,683 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of taire vs tapé

Shared letters: at. Private to "taire": eir. Private to "tapé": .

"taire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "tapé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • taireatire · taier · tairre · tarie · tiare · ttaire

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "taire" and "tapé" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "taire" is a verb and "tapé" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "taire" or "tapé" show up more?
"taire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,298 in our French list, against #10,956 for "tapé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "taire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tapé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #388,683 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "taire" and "tapé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tak vs tapé". 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 #388,683 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