caevscarteTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#43,819
“cae” frequency rank
#716
“carte” frequency rank
44535
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cae carte
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif du verbe irrégulier caer. Représentation géométrique conventionnelle, en positions relatives, de phénomènes concrets ou abstraits (pays, région, ville, astres dans le ciel, etc.), localisables dans l’espace, à échelle réduite.

Where the eye mixes cae and carte

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

3 ch
cae
5 ch
carte

Look-alike desk: cae vs carte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cae is \ˈka.e\ while carte is \kaʁt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44535, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cae is recorded at frequency rank #43,819, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈka.e\. carte is at rank #716, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kaʁt\.

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 44535, this pair ranks #209,757 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cae vs carte

Shared letters: ace. Private to "cae": -. Private to "carte": rt.

"cae" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "carte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carte ← acrte · caret · carrte · cartte · catre · ccarte · crate

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cae" and "carte" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cae" is a verb and "carte" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cae" vs "carte" - which ranks higher?
"carte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #716 in our French list, against #43,819 for "cae". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cae" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "carte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #209,757 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cae" and "carte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cae 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 #209,757 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