cassevscauseWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#2,411
“casse” frequency rank
#332
“cause” frequency rank
2743
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature casse cause
Definition Boîte plate et découverte, composée de deux parties, le haut de casse (majuscules) et le bas de casse (minuscules), et divisée en petites cases pour chaque caractère. Ce qui fait qu’une chose est ou s’opère.

Where the eye mixes casse and cause

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
casse
5 ch
cause

Look-alike desk: casse vs cause

A purely visual mix-up. casse (\kɑs\) and cause (\koz\) 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 a single letter - s in “casse” becomes u in “cause”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2743, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

casse is recorded at frequency rank #2,411, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɑs\. cause is at rank #332, tagged as anoun, pronounced \koz\.

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 2743, this pair ranks #435,561 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of casse vs cause

Shared letters: aces. Private to "casse": -. Private to "cause": u.

"casse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "cause" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casseacsse · cases · ccasse · csase
  • causeacuse · casue · caues · ccause · cuase

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "casse" for "cause" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kɑs\ versus \koz\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "casse" or "cause"?
"cause" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #332 in our French list, against #2,411 for "casse". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "casse" and "cause" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "casse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cause" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #435,561 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "casse" and "cause" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "casse vs casseur". 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 #435,561 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