carburevscassureTell them apart

Which to use

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

#31,390
“carbure” frequency rank
#34,457
“cassure” frequency rank
65847
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carbure cassure
Definition Composé formé par la combinaison du carbone avec un corps simple autre que l’oxygène. Endroit où un objet est cassé.

Where the eye mixes carbure and cassure

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. carbure and cassure follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
carbure
7 ch
cassure

Why the eye confuses carbure with cassure

A purely visual mix-up. carbure (\kaʁ.byʁ\) and cassure (\kɑ.syʁ\) 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 65847, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carbure is recorded at frequency rank #31,390, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaʁ.byʁ\. cassure is at rank #34,457, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɑ.syʁ\.

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 65847, this pair ranks #70,511 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of carbure vs cassure

Shared letters: aceru. Private to "carbure": b. Private to "cassure": s.

"carbure" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "cassure" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carbure ← acrbure · cabrure · carbbure · carbrue · carbuer · carburre · carrbure · carubre
  • cassure ← acssure · cassrue · cassuer · cassurre · casure · casusre · ccassure · csasure

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "carbure" and "cassure" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kaʁ.byʁ\ versus \kɑ.syʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "carbure" or "cassure"?
"carbure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,390 in our French list, against #34,457 for "cassure". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carbure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cassure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,511 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carbure" and "cassure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "casseur vs cassure". 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 #70,511 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