touchévstouchéeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#2,601
“touché” frequency rank
#8,629
“touchée” frequency rank
11230
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature touché touchée
Definition Ému par quelque chose. Féminin singulier de touché.

Same sound, different letters: touché vs touchée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

6 ch
touché
7 ch
touchée

Same sound, different spelling - touché / touchée

This is the hard kind. touché and touchée are pronounced identically (\tu.ʃe\) 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) - “touché” sits inside “touchée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11230, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

touché is recorded at frequency rank #2,601, classified as anadj, pronounced \tu.ʃe\. touchée is at rank #8,629, 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 11230, this pair ranks #409,929 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of touché vs touchée

Shared letters: chotué. Private to "touché": -. Private to "touchée": e.

"touché" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "touchée" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "touché" and "touchée" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\tu.ʃe\), 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, "touché" or "touchée"?
"touché" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,601 in our French list, against #8,629 for "touchée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "touché" / "touchée". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "touché" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "touchée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #409,929 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "touché" and "touchée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "torcher vs touchée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #409,929 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