cabanesvscabinetWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#19,227
“cabanes” frequency rank
#2,028
“cabinet” frequency rank
21255
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabanes cabinet
Definition Pluriel de cabane. Petite pièce retirée.

Where the eye mixes cabanes and cabinet

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. cabanes and cabinet follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
cabanes
7 ch
cabinet

Look-alike desk: cabanes vs cabinet

A purely visual mix-up. cabanes (\ka.ban\) and cabinet (\ka.bi.nɛ\) 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 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21255, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabanes is recorded at frequency rank #19,227, classified as anoun, pronounced \ka.ban\. cabinet is at rank #2,028, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ka.bi.nɛ\.

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 21255, this pair ranks #364,116 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cabanes vs cabinet

Shared letters: abcen. Private to "cabanes": s. Private to "cabinet": it.

"cabanes" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "cabinet" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabanes ← acbanes · caabnes · cabaens · cabaness · cabannes · cabanse · cabbanes · cabnaes
  • cabinet ← acbinet · cabbinet · cabient · cabinett · cabinnet · cabinte · cabniet · caibnet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cabanes" for "cabinet" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ka.ban\ versus \ka.bi.nɛ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "cabanes" or "cabinet" show up more?
"cabinet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,028 in our French list, against #19,227 for "cabanes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabanes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cabinet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #364,116 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabanes" and "cabinet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cabanes vs cutanés". 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 #364,116 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