casquesvschèquesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#11,537
“casques” frequency rank
#10,841
“chèques” frequency rank
22378
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature casques chèques
Definition Pluriel de casque. Pluriel de chèque.

Where the eye mixes casques and chèques

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

7 ch
casques
7 ch
chèques

Why the eye confuses casques with chèques

A purely visual mix-up. casques (\kask\) and chèques (\ʃɛk\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22378, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

casques is recorded at frequency rank #11,537, classified as anoun, pronounced \kask\. chèques is at rank #10,841, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʃɛk\.

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 22378, this pair ranks #358,312 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of casques vs chèques

Shared letters: ceqsu. Private to "casques": a. Private to "chèques": .

"casques" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "chèques" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casquesacsques · caqsues · casqeus · casqques · casquess · casquse · cassques · casuqes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "casques" for "chèques" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kask\ versus \ʃɛk\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "casques" or "chèques" show up more?
"chèques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,841 in our French list, against #11,537 for "casques". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "casques" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chèques" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #358,312 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "casques" and "chèques" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "casques vs casus". 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 #358,312 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