cafésvscapeConfusable pair

Which to use

“cafés” and “cape” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#9,443
“cafés” frequency rank
#10,465
“cape” frequency rank
19908
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cafés cape
Definition Pluriel de café. Vêtement de dessus ample et sans manches.

Where the eye mixes cafés and cape

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. cafés runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against cape's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
cafés
4 ch
cape

Look-alike desk: cafés vs cape

A purely visual mix-up. cafés (\ka.fe\) and cape (\kap\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19908, 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\. cape is at rank #10,465, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kap\.

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 19908, this pair ranks #370,923 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cafés vs cape

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cafés": fsé. Private to "cape": ep.

"cafés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "cape" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cape ← acpe · caep · cappe · ccape · cpae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cafés" and "cape" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ka.fe\ versus \kap\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cafés" or "cape"?
"cafés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,443 in our French list, against #10,465 for "cape". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cafés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cape" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #370,923 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cafés" and "cape" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cape 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 #370,923 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