buéevsbutéeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#42,782
“buée” frequency rank
#46,043
“butée” frequency rank
88825
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature buée butée
Definition Lessive (dans le sens de linge que l’on lave). Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile.

Where the eye mixes buée and butée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

4 ch
buée
5 ch
butée

Look-alike desk: buée vs butée

A purely visual mix-up. buée (\bɥe\) 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88825, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

buée is recorded at frequency rank #42,782, classified as anoun, pronounced \bɥe\. 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 88825, this pair ranks #6,489 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of buée vs butée

Shared letters: beué. Private to "buée": -. Private to "butée": t.

"buée" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "butée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "buée" and "butée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\bɥe\ versus \by.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "buée" vs "butée" - which ranks higher?
"buée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,782 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

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "buée" 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 #6,489 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "buée" and "butée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "buses vs butée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #6,489 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