carnevscernéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: carne is a noun, cernée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“carne” is a noun and “cernée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,492
“carne” frequency rank
#44,362
“cernée” frequency rank
89854
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carne cernée
Definition Angle, coin saillant d’une pièce d'architecture ou de menuiserie. Féminin singulier de cerné.

Where the eye mixes carne and cernée

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

5 ch
carne
6 ch
cernée

Visual trap between carne and cernée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: carne is \kaʁn\ while cernée is \sɛʁ.ne\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 89854, 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\. cernée is at rank #44,362, tagged as anadj, pronounced \sɛʁ.ne\.

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 89854, this pair ranks #5,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of carne vs cernée

Shared letters: cenr. Private to "carne": a. Private to "cernée": é.

"carne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "cernée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carne ← acrne · canre · caren · carnne · carrne · ccarne

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "carne" and "cernée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carne" is a noun and "cernée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "carne" or "cernée"?
"cernée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #44,362 in our French list, against #45,492 for "carne". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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 "cernée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carne" and "cernée" 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 #5,377 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