travaillervstravaillezWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#780
“travailler” frequency rank
#16,253
“travaillez” frequency rank
17033
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature travailler travaillez
Definition Tourmenter ; soumettre à une gêne ; causer de la peine ; torturer psychologiquement. Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de travailler.

Same sound, different letters: travailler vs travaillez

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters. travailler and travaillez follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCVVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

10 ch
travailler
10 ch
travaillez

Ear matches; page differs - travailler and travaillez

This is the hard kind. travailler and travaillez are pronounced identically (\tʁa.va.je\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by a single letter - r in “travailler” becomes z in “travaillez”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17033, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

travailler is recorded at frequency rank #780, classified as averb, pronounced \tʁa.va.je\. travaillez is at rank #16,253, tagged as averb, 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 17033, this pair ranks #385,123 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of travailler vs travaillez

Shared letters: aeilrtv. Private to "travailler": -. Private to "travaillez": z.

"travailler" · 10 letters · shape CCVCVVCCVC  ·  "travaillez" · 10 letters · shape CCVCVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • travailler ← rtavailler · tarvailler · traaviller · travailelr · travailer · travaillerr · travaillre · travaliler
  • travaillez ← rtavaillez · tarvaillez · traavillez · travailelz · travailez · travaillezz · travaillze · travalilez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "travailler" for "travaillez" ever safe?
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.
Frequency check: "travailler" vs "travaillez" - which ranks higher?
"travailler" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #780 in our French list, against #16,253 for "travaillez". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "travailler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "travaillez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #385,123 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "travailler" and "travaillez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "travailla vs travaillez". 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 #385,123 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