bledvsbreTell them apart

Which to use

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

#14,210
“bled” frequency rank
#40,639
“bre” frequency rank
54849
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bled bre
Definition Un pays étranger quelconque, dont est originaire une personne. Mont, montagne.

Where the eye mixes bled and bre

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

4 ch
bled
3 ch
bre

Look-alike desk: bled vs bre

A purely visual mix-up. bled (\blɛd\) and bre (\breː\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54849, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bled is recorded at frequency rank #14,210, classified as anoun, pronounced \blɛd\. bre is at rank #40,639, tagged as anoun, pronounced \breː\.

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 54849, this pair ranks #131,275 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of bled vs bre

Shared letters: be. Private to "bled": dl. Private to "bre": r.

"bled" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "bre" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bledbbled · beld · blde · bledd · blled · lbed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bled" for "bre" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\blɛd\ versus \breː\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "bled" or "bre"?
"bled" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,210 in our French list, against #40,639 for "bre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "bled" and "bre" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bled" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #131,275 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bled" and "bre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bre 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 #131,275 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