Which to use
“carne” and “cerne” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #45,492
- “carne” frequency rank
- #43,332
- “cerne” frequency rank
- 88824
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | carne | cerne |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Angle, coin saillant d’une pièce d'architecture ou de menuiserie. | Cercle sombre qui se forme autour de l’œil. |
Where the eye mixes carne and cerne
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. carne and cerne follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between carne and cerne
A purely visual mix-up. carne (\kaʁn\) and cerne (\sɛʁn\) 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 a single letter - a in “carne” becomes e in “cerne”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88824, 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\. cerne is at rank #43,332, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɛʁn\.
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 88824, this pair ranks #6,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of carne vs cerne
Shared letters: cenr. Private to "carne": a. Private to "cerne": -.
"carne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "cerne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "carne" and "cerne" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "carne" or "cerne" show up more?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "carne" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cerne" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #6,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "carne" and "cerne" 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 #6,492 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.