Which to use
“café” and “cese” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,432
- “café” frequency rank
- #47,212
- “cese” frequency rank
- 48644
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | café | cese |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Graines de caféier, ou poudre formée de ces grains torréfiés et moulus. | Cessation, action de cesser. |
Where the eye mixes café and cese
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.
Look-alike desk: café vs cese
A purely visual mix-up. café (\ka.fe\) and cese (\ˈθese\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48644, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
café is recorded at frequency rank #1,432, classified as anoun, pronounced \ka.fe\. cese is at rank #47,212, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈθese\.
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 48644, this pair ranks #177,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of café vs cese
Shared letters: c. Private to "café": afé. Private to "cese": es.
"café" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "cese" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- cese ← ccese · cees · csee · ecse
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "café" and "cese" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "café" or "cese" show up more?
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 "café" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cese" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #177,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "café" and "cese" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cese". 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 #177,191 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.