butéevsButterWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#46,043
“butée” frequency rank
#38,182
“Butter” frequency rank
84225
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature butée Butter
Definition Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile. Beurre (aliment).

Where the eye mixes butée and Butter

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

5 ch
butée
6 ch
Butter

Why the eye confuses butée with Butter

A purely visual mix-up. butée (\by.te\) and Butter (\ˈbʊ.tɛr\) 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 84225, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

butée is recorded at frequency rank #46,043, classified as anoun, pronounced \by.te\. Butter is at rank #38,182, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈbʊ.tɛr\.

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 84225, this pair ranks #13,356 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of butée vs Butter

Shared letters: betu. Private to "butée": é. Private to "Butter": r.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Butter ← bbutter · btuter · butetr · butterr · buttre · ubtter

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "butée" and "Butter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\by.te\ versus \ˈbʊ.tɛr\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "butée" or "Butter"?
"Butter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,182 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 "butée" and "Butter" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "butée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Butter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,356 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "butée" and "Butter" 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 #13,356 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