carrervscarrésWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: carrer is a verb, carrés is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,969
“carrer” frequency rank
#6,058
“carrés” frequency rank
55027
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carrer carrés
Definition Donner une figure carrée, rendre carré. Masculin pluriel de carré.

Same sound, different letters: carrer vs carrés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. carrer and carrés follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
carrer
6 ch
carrés

Same sound, different spelling - carrer / carrés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: carrer and carrés carry the same recorded pronunciation, \ka.ʁe\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55027, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carrer is recorded at frequency rank #48,969, classified as averb, pronounced \ka.ʁe\. carrés is at rank #6,058, tagged as anadj, 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 55027, this pair ranks #130,126 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of carrer vs carrés

Shared letters: acr. Private to "carrer": e. Private to "carrés": sé.

"carrer" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "carrés" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carrer ← acrrer · carer · carerr · carrerr · carrre · ccarrer · crarer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "carrer" for "carrés" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carrer" is a verb and "carrés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "carrer" or "carrés" show up more?
"carrés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,058 in our French list, against #48,969 for "carrer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carrer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "carrés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #130,126 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carrer" and "carrés" 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 #130,126 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