captagevscaptureConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#43,828
“captage” frequency rank
#6,793
“capture” frequency rank
50621
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captage capture
Definition Action de capter (une source, de l’eau…). Action de capturer ou résultat de cette action.

Where the eye mixes captage and capture

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

7 ch
captage
7 ch
capture

Visual trap between captage and capture

A purely visual mix-up. captage (\kap.taʒ\) and capture (\kap.tyʁ\) 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 50621, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

captage is recorded at frequency rank #43,828, classified as anoun, pronounced \kap.taʒ\. capture is at rank #6,793, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kap.tyʁ\.

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 50621, this pair ranks #161,201 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of captage vs capture

Shared letters: acept. Private to "captage": g. Private to "capture": ru.

"captage" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "capture" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • captageacptage · capatge · capptage · captaeg · captagge · captgae · capttage · catpage
  • captureacpture · cappture · captrue · captture · captuer · capturre · caputre · catpure

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "captage" for "capture" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kap.taʒ\ versus \kap.tyʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "captage" or "capture"?
"capture" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,793 in our French list, against #43,828 for "captage". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "captage" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "capture" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #161,201 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captage" and "capture" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cantate vs captage". 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 #161,201 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