badevsbaraTell them apart

Quick tell: bade is a noun, bara is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“bade” is a noun and “bara” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,898
“bade” frequency rank
#44,884
“bara” frequency rank
70782
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bade bara
Definition Ouverture du compas servant à mesurer l’écart existant entre deux pièces qui devraient être jointives Travailler.

Where the eye mixes bade and bara

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
bade
4 ch
bara

Visual trap between bade and bara

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: bade is \bad\ while bara is \ba.ʁa\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70782, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bade is recorded at frequency rank #25,898, classified as anoun, pronounced \bad\. bara is at rank #44,884, tagged as averb, pronounced \ba.ʁa\.

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 70782, this pair ranks #50,048 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bade vs bara

Shared letters: ab. Private to "bade": de. Private to "bara": r.

"bade" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "bara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • badeabde · badde · baed · bbade · bdae
  • baraabra · baar · bbara · braa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bade" for "bara" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "bade" is a noun and "bara" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "bade" or "bara" show up more?
"bade" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,898 in our French list, against #44,884 for "bara". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "bade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bara" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #50,048 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bade" and "bara" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bara vs bury". 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 #50,048 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