travaillévstravailléeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#2,253
“travaillé” frequency rank
#26,905
“travaillée” frequency rank
29158
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature travaillé travaillée
Definition Auquel on a accordé beaucoup de temps, d'intérêt. Féminin singulier de travaillé.

Same sound, different letters: travaillé vs travaillée

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters. travaillé runs 9 letters (CCVCVVCCV) against travaillée's 10 (CCVCVVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
travaillé
10 ch
travaillée

Same sound, different spelling - travaillé / travaillée

This is the hard kind. travaillé and travaillée are pronounced identically (\tʁa.va.je\) 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) - “travaillé” sits inside “travaillée”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29158, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

travaillé is recorded at frequency rank #2,253, classified as anadj, pronounced \tʁa.va.je\. travaillée is at rank #26,905, 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 29158, this pair ranks #318,408 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of travaillé vs travaillée

Shared letters: ailrtvé. Private to "travaillé": -. Private to "travaillée": e.

"travaillé" · 9 letters · shape CCVCVVCCV  ·  "travaillée" · 10 letters · shape CCVCVVCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "travaillé" and "travaillée" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\tʁa.va.je\), 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, "travaillé" or "travaillée"?
"travaillé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,253 in our French list, against #26,905 for "travaillée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "travaillé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "travaillée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #318,408 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "travaillé" and "travaillée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "travaillée vs travailleuse". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #318,408 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