cassevschasteConfusable pair

Quick tell: casse is a noun, chaste is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“casse” is a noun and “chaste” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,411
“casse” frequency rank
#42,791
“chaste” frequency rank
45202
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature casse chaste
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. Qui s'abstient des plaisirs de la chair.

Where the eye mixes casse and chaste

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. casse runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against chaste's 6 (CCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
casse
6 ch
chaste

Visual trap between casse and chaste

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: casse is \kɑs\ while chaste is \ʃast\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45202, 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\. chaste is at rank #42,791, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʃast\.

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 45202, this pair ranks #204,586 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of casse vs chaste

Shared letters: aces. Private to "casse": -. Private to "chaste": ht.

"casse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "chaste" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casse ← acsse · cases · ccasse · csase
  • chaste ← cahste · cchaste · chaset · chasste · chastte · chatse · chhaste · chsate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "casse" for "chaste" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "casse" is a noun and "chaste" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "casse" vs "chaste" - which ranks higher?
"casse" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,411 in our French list, against #42,791 for "chaste". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "casse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chaste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #204,586 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "casse" and "chaste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chapter vs chaste". 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 #204,586 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