Which to use
“buses” and “butée” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #47,198
- “buses” frequency rank
- #46,043
- “butée” frequency rank
- 93241
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | buses | butée |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pluriel de buse. | Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile. |
Where the eye mixes buses and butée
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. buses (CVCVC) and butée (CVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Look-alike desk: buses vs butée
A purely visual mix-up. buses (\byz\) 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 93241, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
buses is recorded at frequency rank #47,198, classified as anoun, pronounced \byz\. 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 93241, this pair ranks #2,407 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of buses vs butée
Shared letters: beu. Private to "buses": s. Private to "butée": té.
"buses" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "butée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- buses ← bbuses · bsues · buess · busess · busses · ubses
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "buses" and "butée" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "buses" vs "butée" - which ranks higher?
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 "buses" 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 #2,407 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "buses" and "butée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "busan vs buses". 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 #2,407 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.