cadrervscèdresWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: cadrer is a verb, cèdres is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cadrer” is a verb and “cèdres” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#32,324
“cadrer” frequency rank
#41,212
“cèdres” frequency rank
73536
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cadrer cèdres
Definition S’ajuster à, avoir de la convenance, du rapport. Pluriel de cèdre

Where the eye mixes cadrer and cèdres

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. cadrer and cèdres follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
cadrer
6 ch
cèdres

Look-alike desk: cadrer vs cèdres

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cadrer is \kɑ.dʁe\ while cèdres is \sɛdʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73536, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cadrer is recorded at frequency rank #32,324, classified as averb, pronounced \kɑ.dʁe\. cèdres is at rank #41,212, 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 73536, this pair ranks #40,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cadrer vs cèdres

Shared letters: cder. Private to "cadrer": a. Private to "cèdres": sè.

"cadrer" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "cèdres" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cadrer ← acdrer · caddrer · caderr · cadrerr · cadrrer · carder · ccadrer · cdarer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cadrer" for "cèdres" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cadrer" is a verb and "cèdres" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "cadrer" or "cèdres" show up more?
"cadrer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,324 in our French list, against #41,212 for "cèdres". 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 "cadrer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cèdres" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cadrer" and "cèdres" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cédez vs cèdres". 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 #40,128 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