castesvschartesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#31,394
“castes” frequency rank
#17,369
“chartes” frequency rank
48763
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature castes chartes
Definition Pluriel de caste. Pluriel de charte.

Where the eye mixes castes and chartes

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

6 ch
castes
7 ch
chartes

Visual trap between castes and chartes

A purely visual mix-up. castes (\kast\) and chartes (\ʃaʁt\) 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 48763, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

castes is recorded at frequency rank #31,394, classified as anoun, pronounced \kast\. chartes is at rank #17,369, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʃaʁt\.

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 48763, this pair ranks #176,212 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of castes vs chartes

Shared letters: acest. Private to "castes": -. Private to "chartes": hr.

"castes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "chartes" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • castesacstes · casets · casstes · castess · castse · casttes · catses · ccastes
  • chartescahrtes · cchartes · chartess · chartse · charttes · chatres · chhartes · chrates

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "castes" for "chartes" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kast\ versus \ʃaʁt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "castes" or "chartes"?
"chartes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,369 in our French list, against #31,394 for "castes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "castes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chartes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #176,212 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "castes" and "chartes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "castes vs causses". 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 #176,212 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