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Which to use

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

#18,677
“card” frequency rank
#17,379
“cod” frequency rank
36056
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature card cod
Definition Carte. Morue (poisson), cabillaud.

Where the eye mixes card and cod

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
card
3 ch
cod

Why the eye confuses card with cod

A purely visual mix-up. card (\kɑːɹd\) and cod (\kɒd\) 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 36056, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

card is recorded at frequency rank #18,677, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɑːɹd\. cod is at rank #17,379, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɒd\.

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 36056, this pair ranks #272,302 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of card vs cod

Shared letters: cd. Private to "card": ar. Private to "cod": o.

"card" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "cod" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cardacrd · cadr · cardd · carrd · ccard · crad

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "card" and "cod" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kɑːɹd\ versus \kɒd\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "card" vs "cod" - which ranks higher?
"cod" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,379 in our French list, against #18,677 for "card". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "card" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cod" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #272,302 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "card" and "cod" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "card vs ciro". 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 #272,302 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