carmesvscarrezWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#30,089
“carmes” frequency rank
#49,540
“carrez” frequency rank
79629
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carmes carrez
Definition Pluriel de carme. Deuxième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe carrer.

Where the eye mixes carmes and carrez

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. carmes and carrez follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
carmes
6 ch
carrez

Visual trap between carmes and carrez

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: carmes is \kaʁm\ while carrez is \ka.ʁe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79629, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carmes is recorded at frequency rank #30,089, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaʁm\. carrez is at rank #49,540, tagged as averb, pronounced \ka.ʁe\.

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 79629, this pair ranks #22,822 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of carmes vs carrez

Shared letters: acer. Private to "carmes": ms. Private to "carrez": z.

"carmes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "carrez" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carmes ← acrmes · camres · carems · carmess · carmmes · carmse · carrmes · ccarmes
  • carrez ← acrrez · carerz · carez · carrezz · carrze · ccarrez · crarez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "carmes" for "carrez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carmes" is a noun and "carrez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "carmes" or "carrez" show up more?
"carmes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,089 in our French list, against #49,540 for "carrez". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "carmes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "carrez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,822 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carmes" and "carrez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "carrer vs carrez". 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 #22,822 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