Which to use
“cadre” and “café” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #644
- “cadre” frequency rank
- #1,432
- “café” frequency rank
- 2076
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | cadre | café |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Bordure de bois, de marbre, de bronze, etc., dans laquelle on place un tableau, une estampe, un ouvrage de sculpture, etc. | Graines de caféier, ou poudre formée de ces grains torréfiés et moulus. |
Where the eye mixes cadre and café
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: cadre vs café
A purely visual mix-up. cadre (\kadʁ\) and café (\ka.fe\) 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 2076, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
cadre is recorded at frequency rank #644, classified as anoun, pronounced \kadʁ\. café is at rank #1,432, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ka.fe\.
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 2076, this pair ranks #436,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of cadre vs café
Shared letters: ac. Private to "cadre": der. Private to "café": fé.
"cadre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "café" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- cadre ← acdre · caddre · cader · cadrre · carde · ccadre · cdare
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "cadre" for "café" ever safe?
Which is more common, "cadre" or "café"?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "cadre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "café" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #436,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "cadre" and "café" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "café vs CCE". 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 #436,813 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.