tempérévstempéréeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#24,050
“tempéré” frequency rank
#36,614
“tempérée” frequency rank
60664
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tempéré tempérée
Definition Ce qui n’est ni trop chaud ni trop froid, ce qui ne présente ni excès de chaleur ni excès de froid. Féminin singulier de tempéré.

Same sound, different letters: tempéré vs tempérée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. tempéré runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against tempérée's 8 (CVCCVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
tempéré
8 ch
tempérée

Same sound, different spelling - tempéré / tempérée

This is the hard kind. tempéré and tempérée are pronounced identically (\tɑ̃.pe.ʁe\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “tempéré” sits inside “tempérée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60664, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tempéré is recorded at frequency rank #24,050, classified as anadj, pronounced \tɑ̃.pe.ʁe\. tempérée is at rank #36,614, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tɑ̃.pe.ʁe\.

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 60664, this pair ranks #96,444 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tempéré vs tempérée

Shared letters: emprté. Private to "tempéré": -. Private to "tempérée": -.

"tempéré" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "tempérée" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tempéré" and "tempérée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\tɑ̃.pe.ʁe\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "tempéré" or "tempérée"?
"tempéré" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,050 in our French list, against #36,614 for "tempérée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"tempéré" and "tempérée" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tempéré" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tempérée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #96,444 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tempéré" and "tempérée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tempérée vs tempérées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #96,444 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