cartevscathWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#716
“carte” frequency rank
#40,167
“cath” frequency rank
40883
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature carte cath
Definition Représentation géométrique conventionnelle, en positions relatives, de phénomènes concrets ou abstraits (pays, région, ville, astres dans le ciel, etc.), localisables dans l’espace, à échelle réduite. Chat (animal).

Where the eye mixes carte and cath

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
carte
4 ch
cath

Visual trap between carte and cath

A purely visual mix-up. carte (\kaʁt\) and cath (\kaːθ\) 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 40883, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carte is recorded at frequency rank #716, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaʁt\. cath is at rank #40,167, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kaːθ\.

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 40883, this pair ranks #237,195 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of carte vs cath

Shared letters: act. Private to "carte": er. Private to "cath": h.

"carte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "cath" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carteacrte · caret · carrte · cartte · catre · ccarte · crate
  • cathacth · cathh · catth · ccath · ctah

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "carte" and "cath" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kaʁt\ versus \kaːθ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "carte" vs "cath" - which ranks higher?
"carte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #716 in our French list, against #40,167 for "cath". 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 "carte" and "cath" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cath" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #237,195 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carte" and "cath" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "canto vs cath". 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 #237,195 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