touchvstouchéConfusable pair

Quick tell: touch is a noun, touché is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“touch” is a noun and “touché” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,080
“touch” frequency rank
#2,601
“touché” frequency rank
15681
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature touch touché
Definition Toucher (sens du). Ému par quelque chose.

Where the eye mixes touch and touché

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

5 ch
touch
6 ch
touché

Visual trap between touch and touché

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: touch is \tʌt͡ʃ\ while touché is \tu.ʃe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “touch” sits inside “touché”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15681, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

touch is recorded at frequency rank #13,080, classified as anoun, pronounced \tʌt͡ʃ\. touché is at rank #2,601, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tu.ʃe\.

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 15681, this pair ranks #391,294 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of touch vs touché

Shared letters: chotu. Private to "touch": -. Private to "touché": é.

"touch" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "touché" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • touchotuch · tocuh · toucch · touchh · touhc · ttouch · tuoch

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "touch" and "touché" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "touch" is a noun and "touché" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "touch" or "touché"?
"touché" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,601 in our French list, against #13,080 for "touch". 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 "touch" and "touché" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "touch" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "touché" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #391,294 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "touch" and "touché" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teach vs touch". 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 #391,294 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