ceivscoTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#31,876
“cei” frequency rank
#1,856
“co” frequency rank
33732
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cei co
Definition Article adjectival (ou démonstratif) nominatif et accusatif masculin pluriel, généralement traduit par « les ». Connexion.

Letter map: cei vs co

Shared letters muted; letters that set cei and co apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
cei
2 ch
co

Part-of-speech tell for cei / co

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cei is anarticle and coanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33732, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cei is recorded at frequency rank #31,876, classified as anarticle. co is at rank #1,856, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ko\.

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 33732, this pair ranks #288,653 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cei vs co

Shared letters: c. Private to "cei": ei. Private to "co": o.

"cei" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "co" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cei" and "co" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cei" is an article and "co" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cei" or "co"?
"co" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,856 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.

What to do next

Pair "cei" vs "co" 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 "co" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #288,653 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cei" and "co" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cei". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #288,653 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