captagevscépageTell them apart

Which to use

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

#43,828
“captage” frequency rank
#25,612
“cépage” frequency rank
69440
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captage cépage
Definition Action de capter (une source, de l’eau…). Plant, variété ou clone de vigne cultivée.

Where the eye mixes captage and cépage

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. captage runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against cépage's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
captage
6 ch
cépage

Why the eye confuses captage with cépage

A purely visual mix-up. captage (\kap.taʒ\) and cépage (\se.paʒ\) 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 69440, 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\. cépage is at rank #25,612, tagged as anoun, pronounced \se.paʒ\.

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 69440, this pair ranks #55,093 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of captage vs cépage

Shared letters: acegp. Private to "captage": t. Private to "cépage": é.

"captage" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "cépage" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • captage ← acptage · capatge · capptage · captaeg · captagge · captgae · capttage · catpage

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "captage" and "cépage" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kap.taʒ\ versus \se.paʒ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "captage" vs "cépage" - which ranks higher?
"cépage" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,612 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.

After this comparison

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 "cépage" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,093 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captage" and "cépage" 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 #55,093 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