captervscarteWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#11,009
“capter” frequency rank
#716
“carte” frequency rank
11725
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature capter carte
Definition Chercher à obtenir quelque chose, ou à gagner quelqu’un par voie d’insinuation. Représentation géométrique conventionnelle, en positions relatives, de phénomènes concrets ou abstraits (pays, région, ville, astres dans le ciel, etc.), localisables dans l’espace, à échelle réduite.

Where the eye mixes capter and carte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
capter
5 ch
carte

Look-alike desk: capter vs carte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: capter is \kap.te\ while carte is \kaʁt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11725, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

capter is recorded at frequency rank #11,009, classified as averb, pronounced \kap.te\. carte is at rank #716, 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 11725, this pair ranks #408,075 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of capter vs carte

Shared letters: acert. Private to "capter": p. Private to "carte": -.

"capter" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "carte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • capteracpter · capetr · cappter · capterr · captre · captter · catper · ccapter
  • carteacrte · caret · carrte · cartte · catre · ccarte · crate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "capter" for "carte" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "capter" is a verb and "carte" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "capter" or "carte" show up more?
"carte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #716 in our French list, against #11,009 for "capter". 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 "capter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "carte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #408,075 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "capter" and "carte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "capter vs carrer". 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 #408,075 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