cinévsCrieWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#7,941
“ciné” frequency rank
#6,488
“Crie” frequency rank
14429
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ciné Crie
Definition Salle de cinéma. Membre féminin de la nation crie.

Where the eye mixes ciné and Crie

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. ciné (CVCV) and Crie (CCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
ciné
4 ch
Crie

Why the eye confuses ciné with Crie

A purely visual mix-up. ciné (\si.ne\) and Crie (\kʁi\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14429, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ciné is recorded at frequency rank #7,941, classified as anoun, pronounced \si.ne\. Crie is at rank #6,488, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁi\.

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 14429, this pair ranks #396,704 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ciné vs Crie

Shared letters: ci. Private to "ciné": . Private to "Crie": er.

"ciné" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Crie" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Crieccrie · crei · crrie · rcie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ciné" and "Crie" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\si.ne\ versus \kʁi\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "ciné" or "Crie" show up more?
"Crie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,488 in our French list, against #7,941 for "ciné". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "ciné" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Crie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #396,704 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ciné" and "Crie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ciné vs conde". 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 #396,704 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