caevscasseConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#43,819
“cae” frequency rank
#2,411
“casse” frequency rank
46230
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cae casse
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif du verbe irrégulier caer. Boîte plate et découverte, composée de deux parties, le haut de casse (majuscules) et le bas de casse (minuscules), et divisée en petites cases pour chaque caractère.

Where the eye mixes cae and casse

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

3 ch
cae
5 ch
casse

Visual trap between cae and casse

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cae is \ˈka.e\ while casse is \kɑs\. 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 46230, 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\. casse is at rank #2,411, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɑs\.

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 46230, this pair ranks #196,569 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cae vs casse

Shared letters: ace. Private to "cae": -. Private to "casse": s.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casse ← acsse · cases · ccasse · csase

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cae" and "casse" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cae" is a verb and "casse" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cae" vs "casse" - which ranks higher?
"casse" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,411 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.

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 "cae" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "casse" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #196,569 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cae" and "casse" 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 #196,569 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