carrévscarrezWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#3,386
“carré” frequency rank
#49,540
“carrez” frequency rank
52926
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carré carrez
Definition En forme de rectangle dont les côtés sont tous égaux. Deuxième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe carrer.

Same sound, different letters: carré vs carrez

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. carré runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against carrez's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
carré
6 ch
carrez

Same sound, different spelling - carré / carrez

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: carré and carrez carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ka.ʁe\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52926, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carré is recorded at frequency rank #3,386, classified as anadj, pronounced \ka.ʁe\. 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 52926, this pair ranks #144,310 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of carré vs carrez

Shared letters: acr. Private to "carré": é. Private to "carrez": ez.

"carré" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "carrez" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carrez ← acrrez · carerz · carez · carrezz · carrze · ccarrez · crarez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "carré" for "carrez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carré" is an adjective and "carrez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "carré" or "carrez"?
"carré" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,386 in our French list, against #49,540 for "carrez". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

"carré" and "carrez" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carré" 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 #144,310 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carré" 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 #144,310 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