acrevsalbeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#28,433
“acre” frequency rank
#44,849
“albe” frequency rank
73282
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acre albe
Definition Unité de surface égale à 0,4 hectare ou à 4046,9 mètres carrés, encore utilisée en agriculture et dans divers pays avec des valeurs différentes. Ablette.

Where the eye mixes acre and albe

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. acre and albe follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
acre
4 ch
albe

Look-alike desk: acre vs albe

A purely visual mix-up. acre (\akʁ\) and albe (\alb\) 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 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73282, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

acre is recorded at frequency rank #28,433, classified as anoun, pronounced \akʁ\. albe is at rank #44,849, tagged as anoun, pronounced \alb\.

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 73282, this pair ranks #41,014 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of acre vs albe

Shared letters: ae. Private to "acre": cr. Private to "albe": bl.

"acre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "albe" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acre ← accre · acrre
  • albe ← albbe · aleb · allbe · labe

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "acre" and "albe" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\akʁ\ versus \alb\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "acre" vs "albe" - which ranks higher?
"acre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,433 in our French list, against #44,849 for "albe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "acre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "albe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #41,014 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acre" and "albe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "albe vs Aure". 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 #41,014 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