ceivsceseConfusable pair

Quick tell: cei is a article, cese is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#31,876
“cei” frequency rank
#47,212
“cese” frequency rank
79088
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cei cese
Definition Article adjectival (ou démonstratif) nominatif et accusatif masculin pluriel, généralement traduit par « les ». Cessation, action de cesser.

Letter map: cei vs cese

Shared letters muted; letters that set cei and cese apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. cei runs 3 letters (CVV) against cese's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
cei
4 ch
cese

Role in the sentence - cei and cese

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cei is anarticle and ceseanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79088, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cei is recorded at frequency rank #31,876, classified as anarticle. cese is at rank #47,212, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈθese\.

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 79088, this pair ranks #24,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cei vs cese

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

"cei" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "cese" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cese ← ccese · cees · csee · ecse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cei" and "cese" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cei" is an article and "cese" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cei" vs "cese" - which ranks higher?
"cei" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,876 in our French list, against #47,212 for "cese". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "cei" and "cese".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cei" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cese" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #24,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cei" and "cese" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cese". 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 #24,099 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