baravsbarraTell them apart

Which to use

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

#44,884
“bara” frequency rank
#36,267
“barra” frequency rank
81151
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bara barra
Definition Travailler. Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de barrer.

Same sound, different letters: bara vs barra

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. bara runs 4 letters (CVCV) against barra's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
bara
5 ch
barra

Ear matches; page differs - bara and barra

This is the hard kind. bara and barra are pronounced identically (\ba.ʁa\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81151, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bara is recorded at frequency rank #44,884, classified as averb, pronounced \ba.ʁa\. barra is at rank #36,267, 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 81151, this pair ranks #19,380 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bara vs barra

Shared letters: abr. Private to "bara": -. Private to "barra": -.

"bara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "barra" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bara ← abra · baar · bbara · braa
  • barra ← abrra · barar · bbarra · brara

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "bara" and "barra" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ba.ʁa\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "bara" vs "barra" - which ranks higher?
"barra" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,267 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

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "bara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "barra" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,380 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bara" and "barra" 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 #19,380 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