treizièmevsXIIIeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: treizième is a noun, XIIIe is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“treizième” is a noun and “XIIIe” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,008
“treizième” frequency rank
#16,512
“XIIIe” frequency rank
36520
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature treizième XIIIe
Definition Élément ordinal, correspondant au cardinal treize. Treizième.

Same sound, different letters: treizième vs XIIIe

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. treizième runs 9 letters (CCVVCVVCV) against XIIIe's 5 (CVVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
treizième
5 ch
XIIIe

Same sound, different spelling - treizième / XIIIe

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: treizième and XIIIe carry the same recorded pronunciation, \tʁɛ.zjɛm\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36520, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

treizième is recorded at frequency rank #20,008, classified as anoun, pronounced \tʁɛ.zjɛm\. XIIIe is at rank #16,512, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tʁɛ.zjɛm\.

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 36520, this pair ranks #269,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of treizième vs XIIIe

Shared letters: ei. Private to "treizième": mrtzè. Private to "XIIIe": x.

"treizième" · 9 letters · shape CCVVCVVCV  ·  "XIIIe" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • XIIIeixiie · xiiei · xxiiie

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "treizième" for "XIIIe" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "treizième" is a noun and "XIIIe" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "treizième" or "XIIIe" show up more?
"XIIIe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,512 in our French list, against #20,008 for "treizième". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "treizième" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "XIIIe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #269,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "treizième" and "XIIIe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "treizième vs trentième". 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 #269,025 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