captéevscapterConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#39,691
“captée” frequency rank
#11,009
“capter” frequency rank
50700
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captée capter
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier du verbe capter. Chercher à obtenir quelque chose, ou à gagner quelqu’un par voie d’insinuation.

Same sound, different letters: captée vs capter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters.

6 ch
captée
6 ch
capter

Same sound, different spelling - captée / capter

This is the hard kind. captée and capter are pronounced identically (\kap.te\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50700, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

captée is recorded at frequency rank #39,691, classified as averb, pronounced \kap.te\. capter is at rank #11,009, tagged as averb, pronounced \kap.te\.

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 50700, this pair ranks #160,622 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of captée vs capter

Shared letters: acept. Private to "captée": é. Private to "capter": r.

"captée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "capter" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • capteracpter · capetr · cappter · capterr · captre · captter · catper · ccapter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "captée" for "capter" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\kap.te\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "captée" or "capter"?
"capter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,009 in our French list, against #39,691 for "captée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"captée" and "capter" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "captée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "capter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #160,622 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captée" and "capter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "captée vs cryptée". 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 #160,622 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