volontévsvoyanteWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#1,193
“volonté” frequency rank
#25,167
“voyante” frequency rank
26360
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature volonté voyante
Definition Faculté de vouloir, de se déterminer à quelque chose ; en particulier, cette faculté même en tant qu’elle est plus ou moins agissante. Celle qui peut voir, n’est pas aveugle.

Where the eye mixes volonté and voyante

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. volonté (CVCVCCV) and voyante (CVVVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
volonté
7 ch
voyante

Look-alike desk: volonté vs voyante

A purely visual mix-up. volonté (\vɔ.lɔ̃.te\) and voyante (\vwa.jɑ̃t\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26360, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

volonté is recorded at frequency rank #1,193, classified as anoun, pronounced \vɔ.lɔ̃.te\. voyante is at rank #25,167, tagged as anoun, pronounced \vwa.jɑ̃t\.

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 26360, this pair ranks #335,504 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of volonté vs voyante

Shared letters: notv. Private to "volonté": lé. Private to "voyante": aey.

"volonté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "voyante" · 7 letters · shape CVVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • voyante ← ovyante · voaynte · voyanet · voyannte · voyantte · voyatne · voynate · voyyante

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "volonté" for "voyante" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\vɔ.lɔ̃.te\ versus \vwa.jɑ̃t\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "volonté" or "voyante" show up more?
"volonté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,193 in our French list, against #25,167 for "voyante". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "volonté" and "voyante" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "volonté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "voyante" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #335,504 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "volonté" and "voyante" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "vacante vs voyante". 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 #335,504 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