cadevscèdreWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#40,160
“cade” frequency rank
#28,508
“cèdre” frequency rank
68668
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cade cèdre
Definition Oxycèdre. Espèce d’arbre du genre Cedrus, conifère de grande taille de la famille des Pinacées, aux branches horizontales en plans superposés et à cônes globuleux et dressés, souvent utilisé pour l’ornementation et dont le bois passe pour incorruptible.

Where the eye mixes cade and cèdre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cade runs 4 letters (CVCV) against cèdre's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
cade
5 ch
cèdre

Visual trap between cade and cèdre

A purely visual mix-up. cade (\kad\) and cèdre (\sɛdʁ\) 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 68668, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cade is recorded at frequency rank #40,160, classified as anoun, pronounced \kad\. cèdre is at rank #28,508, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɛdʁ\.

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 68668, this pair ranks #58,200 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cade vs cèdre

Shared letters: cde. Private to "cade": a. Private to "cèdre": rè.

"cade" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cèdre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cade ← acde · cadde · caed · ccade · cdae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cade" and "cèdre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kad\ versus \sɛdʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cade" or "cèdre"?
"cèdre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,508 in our French list, against #40,160 for "cade". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cèdre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #58,200 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cade" and "cèdre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cade vs conde". 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 #58,200 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