Which to use
“brute” and “butée” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,937
- “brute” frequency rank
- #46,043
- “butée” frequency rank
- 53980
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | brute | butée |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Animal considéré comme étant privé de raison. | Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile. |
Where the eye mixes brute and butée
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. brute (CCVCV) and butée (CVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Look-alike desk: brute vs butée
A purely visual mix-up. brute (\bʁyt\) 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 53980, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
brute is recorded at frequency rank #7,937, classified as anoun, pronounced \bʁyt\. 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 53980, this pair ranks #137,125 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of brute vs butée
Shared letters: betu. Private to "brute": r. Private to "butée": é.
"brute" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV · "butée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- brute ← bbrute · brrute · brtue · bruet · brutte · burte · rbute
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "brute" and "butée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "brute" or "butée"?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "brute" 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 #137,125 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "brute" 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 #137,125 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.