teindrevsteintéeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#34,778
“teindre” frequency rank
#31,278
“teintée” frequency rank
66056
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature teindre teintée
Definition Faire prendre à une étoffe ou à autre chose une couleur différente de celle qu’elle avait, en la plongeant dans un liquide spécial. Féminin singulier de teinté.

Where the eye mixes teindre and teintée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. teindre (CVVCCCV) and teintée (CVVCCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
teindre
7 ch
teintée

Why the eye confuses teindre with teintée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: teindre is \tɛ̃dʁ\ while teintée is \tɛ̃.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66056, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

teindre is recorded at frequency rank #34,778, classified as averb, pronounced \tɛ̃dʁ\. teintée is at rank #31,278, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tɛ̃.te\.

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 66056, this pair ranks #69,534 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of teindre vs teintée

Shared letters: eint. Private to "teindre": dr. Private to "teintée": é.

"teindre" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV  ·  "teintée" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • teindreetindre · teidnre · teinddre · teinder · teindrre · teinndre · teinrde · tenidre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "teindre" for "teintée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "teindre" is a verb and "teintée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "teindre" vs "teintée" - which ranks higher?
"teintée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,278 in our French list, against #34,778 for "teindre". 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 "teindre" and "teintée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "teindre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "teintée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,534 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "teindre" and "teintée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teindre vs tende". 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 #69,534 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