cédéevscelteTell them apart

Quick tell: cédée is a verb, celte is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cédée” is a verb and “celte” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,121
“cédée” frequency rank
#27,360
“celte” frequency rank
57481
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cédée celte
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier du verbe céder. Relatif aux Celtes.

Where the eye mixes cédée and celte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
cédée
5 ch
celte

Visual trap between cédée and celte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cédée is \se.de\ while celte is \sɛlt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57481, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cédée is recorded at frequency rank #30,121, classified as averb, pronounced \se.de\. celte is at rank #27,360, tagged as anadj, pronounced \sɛlt\.

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 57481, this pair ranks #114,786 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cédée vs celte

Shared letters: ce. Private to "cédée": . Private to "celte": lt.

"cédée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "celte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • celteccelte · celet · cellte · celtte · cetle · clete · eclte

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cédée" for "celte" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cédée" is a verb and "celte" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cédée" or "celte"?
"celte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,360 in our French list, against #30,121 for "cédée". 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 "cédée" and "celte" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cédée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "celte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #114,786 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cédée" and "celte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cedar vs cédée". 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 #114,786 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