castvscastleWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#28,476
“cast” frequency rank
#15,323
“castle” frequency rank
43799
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cast castle
Definition Synonyme de transtypage. Château-fort, château.

Where the eye mixes cast and castle

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

4 ch
cast
6 ch
castle

Look-alike desk: cast vs castle

A purely visual mix-up. cast (\kast\) and castle (\ˈkæs.əl\) 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 2 extra letter(s) - “cast” sits inside “castle”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43799, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cast is recorded at frequency rank #28,476, classified as anoun, pronounced \kast\. castle is at rank #15,323, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈkæs.əl\.

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 43799, this pair ranks #215,313 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cast vs castle

Shared letters: acst. Private to "cast": -. Private to "castle": el.

"cast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "castle" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • castacst · casst · castt · ccast · csat
  • castleacstle · caslte · casstle · castel · castlle · casttle · catsle · ccastle

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cast" for "castle" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kast\ versus \ˈkæs.əl\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "cast" vs "castle" - which ranks higher?
"castle" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,323 in our French list, against #28,476 for "cast". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "castle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #215,313 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cast" and "castle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cast 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 #215,313 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