cafésvscaunesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#9,443
“cafés” frequency rank
#41,696
“caunes” frequency rank
51139
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cafés caunes
Definition Pluriel de café. Pluriel de caune.

Where the eye mixes cafés and caunes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cafés runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against caunes's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
cafés
6 ch
caunes

Look-alike desk: cafés vs caunes

A purely visual mix-up. cafés (\ka.fe\) and caunes (\kon\) 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 51139, 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\. caunes is at rank #41,696, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kon\.

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 51139, this pair ranks #157,280 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cafés vs caunes

Shared letters: acs. Private to "cafés": fé. Private to "caunes": enu.

"cafés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "caunes" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caunes ← acunes · canues · cauens · cauness · caunnes · caunse · ccaunes · cuanes

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cafés" and "caunes" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ka.fe\ versus \kon\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "cafés" vs "caunes" - which ranks higher?
"cafés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,443 in our French list, against #41,696 for "caunes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "cafés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "caunes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #157,280 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cafés" and "caunes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "caunes vs causses". 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 #157,280 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