tapévsteWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: tapé is a adjective, te is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#10,956
“tapé” frequency rank
#103
“te” frequency rank
11059
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tapé te
Definition Se dit particulièrement de certains fruits aplatis et séchés au four. Pronom à la deuxième personne du singulier, utilisé pour désigner celui à qui l’on parle, en tant que complément d’objet direct ou indirect.

Where the eye mixes tapé and te

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

4 ch
tapé
2 ch
te

Why the eye confuses tapé with te

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: tapé is \ta.pe\ while te is \tə\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11059, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tapé is recorded at frequency rank #10,956, classified as anadj, pronounced \ta.pe\. te is at rank #103, tagged as apron, pronounced \tə\.

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 11059, this pair ranks #410,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of tapé vs te

Shared letters: t. Private to "tapé": apé. Private to "te": e.

"tapé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "te" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "tapé" for "te" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tapé" is an adjective and "te" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "tapé" vs "te" - which ranks higher?
"te" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #103 in our French list, against #10,956 for "tapé". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tapé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "te" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #410,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tapé" and "te" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tak vs tapé". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #410,623 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