captéevscartesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: captée is a verb, cartes is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“captée” is a verb and “cartes” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,691
“captée” frequency rank
#1,766
“cartes” frequency rank
41457
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captée cartes
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier du verbe capter. Pluriel de carte.

Where the eye mixes captée and cartes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. captée (CVCCVV) and cartes (CVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
captée
6 ch
cartes

Visual trap between captée and cartes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: captée is \kap.te\ while cartes is \kaʁt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41457, 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\. cartes is at rank #1,766, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kaʁt\.

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 41457, this pair ranks #232,954 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of captée vs cartes

Shared letters: acet. Private to "captée": pé. Private to "cartes": rs.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cartes ← acrtes · carets · carrtes · cartess · cartse · carttes · catres · ccartes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "captée" and "cartes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "captée" is a verb and "cartes" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "captée" or "cartes" show up more?
"cartes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,766 in our French list, against #39,691 for "captée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "captée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cartes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #232,954 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captée" and "cartes" 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 #232,954 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