chatvscutWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“chat” and “cut” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#1,433
“chat” frequency rank
#17,668
“cut” frequency rank
19101
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature chat cut
Definition Mammifère carnivore félin de taille moyenne, au museau court et arrondi, domestiqué, apprivoisé ou encore à l’état sauvage. Pointage permettant de se qualifier.

Where the eye mixes chat and cut

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

4 ch
chat
3 ch
cut

Look-alike desk: chat vs cut

A purely visual mix-up. chat (\ʃa\) and cut (\kœt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19101, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

chat is recorded at frequency rank #1,433, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃa\. cut is at rank #17,668, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kœt\.

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 19101, this pair ranks #375,006 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of chat vs cut

Shared letters: ct. Private to "chat": ah. Private to "cut": u.

"chat" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "cut" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • chatcaht · cchat · chatt · chhat · chta · hcat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "chat" for "cut" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʃa\ versus \kœt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "chat" or "cut"?
"chat" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,433 in our French list, against #17,668 for "cut". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "chat" and "cut" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "chat" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cut" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #375,006 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "chat" and "cut" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs cut". 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 #375,006 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