butéevsbuttesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#46,043
“butée” frequency rank
#35,412
“buttes” frequency rank
81455
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature butée buttes
Definition Dispositif servant à délimiter la course d’une pièce mobile. Pluriel de butte.

Where the eye mixes butée and buttes

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

5 ch
butée
6 ch
buttes

Look-alike desk: butée vs buttes

A purely visual mix-up. butée (\by.te\) and buttes (\byt\) 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 81455, 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\. buttes is at rank #35,412, tagged as anoun, pronounced \byt\.

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 81455, this pair ranks #18,711 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of butée vs buttes

Shared letters: betu. Private to "butée": é. Private to "buttes": s.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • buttes ← bbuttes · btutes · butes · butets · buttess · buttse · ubttes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "butée" and "buttes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\by.te\ versus \byt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "butée" vs "buttes" - which ranks higher?
"buttes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,412 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

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "butée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "buttes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,711 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "butée" and "buttes" 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 #18,711 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