cei vs ces, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“cei” is an article and “ces” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,876
“cei” frequency rank: #74
“ces” frequency rank: 31950
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	cei	ces
Definition	Article adjectival (ou démonstratif) nominatif et accusatif masculin pluriel, généralement traduit par « les ».	Pluriel de ce et cette.

Letter map: cei vs ces

Shared letters muted; letters that set cei and ces apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

cei

3 ch

ces

Role in the sentence - cei and ces

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cei is anarticle and cesadeterminer. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “cei” becomes s in “ces”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31950, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cei is recorded at frequency rank #31,876, classified as anarticle. ces is at rank #74, tagged as adet, pronounced \se\.

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 31950, this pair ranks #300,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cei vs ces

Shared letters: ce. Private to "cei": i. Private to "ces": s.

"cei" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "ces" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cei" and "ces" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cei" is an article and "ces" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "cei" or "ces"?

"ces" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #74 in our French list, against #31,876 for "cei". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "cei" vs "ces" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "cei" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ces" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #300,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"cei" and "ces" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cei". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #300,536 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.