cesevscrééeWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#47,212
“cese” frequency rank
#3,394
“créée” frequency rank
50606
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cese créée
Definition Cessation, action de cesser. Participe passé féminin singulier de créer.

Where the eye mixes cese and créée

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

4 ch
cese
5 ch
créée

Why the eye confuses cese with créée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cese is \ˈθese\ while créée is \kʁe.e\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50606, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cese is recorded at frequency rank #47,212, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈθese\. créée is at rank #3,394, tagged as averb, pronounced \kʁe.e\.

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 50606, this pair ranks #161,323 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cese vs créée

Shared letters: ce. Private to "cese": s. Private to "créée": .

"cese" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "créée" · 5 letters · shape CCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ceseccese · cees · csee · ecse

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cese" for "créée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cese" is a noun and "créée" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "cese" or "créée" show up more?
"créée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,394 in our French list, against #47,212 for "cese". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cese" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "créée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #161,323 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cese" and "créée" 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 #161,323 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