cinqvsCirWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: cinq is a adjective, Cir is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cinq” is an adjective and “Cir” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#424
“cinq” frequency rank
#29,282
“Cir” frequency rank
29706
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cinq Cir
Definition Adjectif numéral correspondant au cardinal quatre plus un. Cyr.

Letter map: cinq vs Cir

Shared letters muted; letters that set cinq and Cir apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
cinq
3 ch
Cir

Part-of-speech tell for cinq / Cir

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cinq is anadjective and Ciraname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29706, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cinq is recorded at frequency rank #424, classified as anadj, pronounced \sɛ̃k\. Cir is at rank #29,282, tagged as aname.

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 29706, this pair ranks #314,996 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cinq vs Cir

Shared letters: ci. Private to "cinq": nq. Private to "Cir": r.

"cinq" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Cir" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cinqccinq · cinnq · cinqq · ciqn · cniq · icnq

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cinq" for "Cir" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cinq" is an adjective and "Cir" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "cinq" or "Cir" show up more?
"cinq" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #424 in our French list, against #29,282 for "Cir". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "cinq" vs "Cir" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cinq" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Cir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #314,996 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cinq" and "Cir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Cir vs ciro". 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 #314,996 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