cartevschasteTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#23,487
“carte” frequency rank
#36,921
“chaste” frequency rank
60408
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carte chaste
Definition A bill of fare; a menu. Synonym of pure and virtuous, particularly

Where the eye mixes carte and chaste

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. carte runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against chaste's 6 (CCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
carte
6 ch
chaste

Look-alike desk: carte vs chaste

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: carte is /kɑː(ɹ)t/ while chaste is /t͡ʃeɪst/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60408, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carte is recorded at frequency rank #23,487, classified as anoun, pronounced /kɑː(ɹ)t/. chaste is at rank #36,921, tagged as anadj, pronounced /t͡ʃeɪst/.

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 60408, this pair ranks #100,360 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of carte vs chaste

Shared letters: acet. Private to "carte": r. Private to "chaste": hs.

"carte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "chaste" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carte ← acrte · caret · carrte · cartte · ccarte
  • chaste ← cahste · cchaste · chaset · chasste · chastte · chatse · chhaste · chsate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "carte" for "chaste" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carte" is a noun and "chaste" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "carte" or "chaste" show up more?
"carte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,487 in our English list, against #36,921 for "chaste". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "carte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chaste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #100,360 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carte" and "chaste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chaise vs chaste". 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 #100,360 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list