bitesvsbutéeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#14,866
“bites” frequency rank
#46,043
“butée” frequency rank
60909
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bites butée
Definition Pluriel de bite. Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile.

Where the eye mixes bites and butée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
bites
5 ch
butée

Look-alike desk: bites vs butée

A purely visual mix-up. bites (\bit\) and butée (\by.te\) 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 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60909, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bites is recorded at frequency rank #14,866, classified as anoun, pronounced \bit\. butée is at rank #46,043, tagged as anoun, pronounced \by.te\.

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 60909, this pair ranks #95,149 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bites vs butée

Shared letters: bet. Private to "bites": is. Private to "butée": .

"bites" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "butée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bitesbbites · biets · bitess · bitse · bittes · bties · ibtes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bites" for "butée" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\bit\ versus \by.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "bites" or "butée"?
"bites" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,866 in our French list, against #46,043 for "butée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bites" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "butée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #95,149 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bites" and "butée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "buses vs butée". 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 #95,149 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