Which to use
“cafés” and “cakes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,443
- “cafés” frequency rank
- #48,958
- “cakes” frequency rank
- 58401
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | cafés | cakes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pluriel de café. | Pluriel de cake. |
Where the eye mixes cafés and cakes
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cafés and cakes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: cafés vs cakes
A purely visual mix-up. cafés (\ka.fe\) and cakes (\kɛk\) 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 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58401, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
cafés is recorded at frequency rank #9,443, classified as anoun, pronounced \ka.fe\. cakes is at rank #48,958, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɛk\.
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 58401, this pair ranks #109,281 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of cafés vs cakes
Shared letters: acs. Private to "cafés": fé. Private to "cakes": ek.
"cafés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "cakes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- cakes ← ackes · caeks · cakess · cakkes · cakse · ccakes · ckaes
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "cafés" and "cakes" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "cafés" or "cakes"?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "cafés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cakes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #109,281 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "cafés" and "cakes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cakes vs casus". 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 #109,281 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.