ceivsconWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#31,876
“cei” frequency rank
#1,056
“con” frequency rank
32932
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cei con
Definition Article adjectival (ou démonstratif) nominatif et accusatif masculin pluriel, généralement traduit par « les ». Sexe de la femme.

Letter map: cei vs con

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

3 ch
cei
3 ch
con

Part-of-speech tell for cei / con

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cei is anarticle and conanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32932, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cei is recorded at frequency rank #31,876, classified as anarticle. con is at rank #1,056, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɔ̃\.

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 32932, this pair ranks #293,995 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cei vs con

Shared letters: c. Private to "cei": ei. Private to "con": no.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cei" for "con" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cei" is an article and "con" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cei" vs "con" - which ranks higher?
"con" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,056 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.

After this comparison

Pair "cei" vs "con" 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 "con" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #293,995 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cei" and "con" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cei". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #293,995 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