tevstuéConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#103
“te” frequency rank
#1,543
“tué” frequency rank
1646
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature te tué
Definition 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. Homme, ou garçon, décédé par fait de violence.

Where the eye mixes te and tué

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

2 ch
te
3 ch
tué

Visual trap between te and tué

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: te is \tə\ while tué is \tɥe\. 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 (pronoun vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1646, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

te is recorded at frequency rank #103, classified as apron, pronounced \tə\. tué is at rank #1,543, tagged as anoun, pronounced \tɥe\.

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 1646, this pair ranks #437,645 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of te vs tué

Shared letters: t. Private to "te": e. Private to "tué": .

"te" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "tué" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "te" for "tué" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "te" is a pronoun and "tué" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "te" or "tué" show up more?
"te" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #103 in our French list, against #1,543 for "tué". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "te" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tué" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #437,645 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "te" and "tué" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tif vs tué". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #437,645 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