Which to use
“travail” is a noun and “travaillé” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #194
- “travail” frequency rank
- #2,253
- “travaillé” frequency rank
- 2447
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | travail | travaillé |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Labeur, application à une tâche, effort soutenu pour faire quelque chose, en parlant de l’esprit comme du corps. | Auquel on a accordé beaucoup de temps, d'intérêt. |
Where the eye mixes travail and travaillé
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses travail with travaillé
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: travail is \tʁa.vaj\ while travaillé is \tʁa.va.je\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “travail” sits inside “travaillé”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2447, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
travail is recorded at frequency rank #194, classified as anoun, pronounced \tʁa.vaj\. travaillé is at rank #2,253, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tʁa.va.je\.
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 2447, this pair ranks #436,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of travail vs travaillé
Shared letters: ailrtv. Private to "travail": -. Private to "travaillé": é.
"travail" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC · "travaillé" · 9 letters · shape CCVCVVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- travail ← rtavail · tarvail · traavil · travaill · travali · travial · travvail · trravail
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "travail" and "travaillé" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "travail" or "travaillé" show up more?
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 "travail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "travaillé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #436,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "travail" and "travaillé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "travailla vs travaillé". 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 #436,128 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.