bustervsbutéeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#31,383
“buster” frequency rank
#46,043
“butée” frequency rank
77426
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature buster butée
Definition (principalement dans la construction buster of…) Casseur, destructeur, exploseur de… dans le sens personne qui casse, détruit, explose un type d'objet donné. Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile.

Where the eye mixes buster and butée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. buster runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against butée's 5 (CVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
buster
5 ch
butée

Look-alike desk: buster vs butée

A purely visual mix-up. buster (\ˈbʌs.tə(ɹ)\) 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 77426, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

buster is recorded at frequency rank #31,383, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈbʌs.tə(ɹ)\. 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 77426, this pair ranks #28,410 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of buster vs butée

Shared letters: betu. Private to "buster": rs. Private to "butée": é.

"buster" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "butée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • buster ← bbuster · bsuter · busetr · busster · busterr · bustre · bustter · butser

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "buster" and "butée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ˈbʌs.tə(ɹ)\ versus \by.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "buster" or "butée" show up more?
"buster" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,383 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "buster" 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 #28,410 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "buster" 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 #28,410 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