bevsbelaConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#4,044
“be” frequency rank
#47,185
“bela” frequency rank
51229
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature be bela
Definition Être. Voile.

Letter map: be vs bela

Shared letters muted; letters that set be and bela apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
be
4 ch
bela

Role in the sentence - be and bela

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: be is averb and belaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “be” sits inside “bela”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51229, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

be is recorded at frequency rank #4,044, classified as averb, pronounced \biː\. bela is at rank #47,185, tagged as anoun.

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 51229, this pair ranks #156,594 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of be vs bela

Shared letters: be. Private to "be": -. Private to "bela": al.

"be" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "bela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • belabbela · beal · blea · ebla

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "be" for "bela" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "be" is a verb and "bela" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "be" vs "bela" - which ranks higher?
"be" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,044 in our French list, against #47,185 for "bela". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "be" vs "bela" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "be" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bela" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #156,594 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "be" and "bela" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bela vs bold". 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 #156,594 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