touchaitvstouchantsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#17,839
“touchait” frequency rank
#47,076
“touchants” frequency rank
64915
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature touchait touchants
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de toucher. Masculin pluriel de touchant.

Where the eye mixes touchait and touchants

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence.

8 ch
touchait
9 ch
touchants

Visual trap between touchait and touchants

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: touchait is \tu.ʃɛ\ while touchants is \tu.ʃɑ̃\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64915, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

touchait is recorded at frequency rank #17,839, classified as averb, pronounced \tu.ʃɛ\. touchants is at rank #47,076, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tu.ʃɑ̃\.

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 64915, this pair ranks #74,734 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of touchait vs touchants

Shared letters: achotu. Private to "touchait": i. Private to "touchants": ns.

"touchait" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCVVC  ·  "touchants" · 9 letters · shape CVVCCVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • touchaitotuchait · tocuhait · toucahit · toucchait · touchaitt · touchati · touchhait · touchiat
  • touchantsotuchants · tocuhants · toucahnts · toucchants · touchannts · touchanst · touchantss · touchantts

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "touchait" and "touchants" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "touchait" is a verb and "touchants" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "touchait" or "touchants" show up more?
"touchait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,839 in our French list, against #47,076 for "touchants". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "touchait" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "touchants" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #74,734 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "touchait" and "touchants" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "touchais vs touchants". 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 #74,734 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