carnevscartesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#45,492
“carne” frequency rank
#1,766
“cartes” frequency rank
47258
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carne cartes
Definition Angle, coin saillant d’une pièce d'architecture ou de menuiserie. Pluriel de carte.

Where the eye mixes carne and cartes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. carne runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against cartes's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
carne
6 ch
cartes

Look-alike desk: carne vs cartes

A purely visual mix-up. carne (\kaʁn\) and cartes (\kaʁt\) 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 47258, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carne is recorded at frequency rank #45,492, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaʁn\. 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 47258, this pair ranks #188,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of carne vs cartes

Shared letters: acer. Private to "carne": n. Private to "cartes": st.

"carne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "cartes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carne ← acrne · canre · caren · carnne · carrne · ccarne
  • cartes ← acrtes · carets · carrtes · cartess · cartse · carttes · catres · ccartes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "carne" and "cartes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kaʁn\ versus \kaʁt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "carne" 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 #45,492 for "carne". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "carne" and "cartes" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carne" 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 #188,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carne" and "cartes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "carne 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 #188,329 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