citervsciteraWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#3,596
“citer” frequency rank
#47,791
“citera” frequency rank
51387
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature citer citera
Definition Assigner à comparaître devant une juridiction civile ou religieuse. Troisième personne du singulier du futur du verbe citer.

Where the eye mixes citer and citera

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

5 ch
citer
6 ch
citera

Why the eye confuses citer with citera

A purely visual mix-up. citer (\si.te\) and citera (\si.t(ə.)ʁa\) 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 extra letter(s) - “citer” sits inside “citera”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51387, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

citer is recorded at frequency rank #3,596, classified as averb, pronounced \si.te\. citera is at rank #47,791, tagged as averb, pronounced \si.t(ə.)ʁa\.

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 51387, this pair ranks #155,378 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of citer vs citera

Shared letters: ceirt. Private to "citer": -. Private to "citera": a.

"citer" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "citera" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • citercciter · cietr · citerr · citre · citter · ctier · icter
  • citeraccitera · cietra · citear · citerra · citrea · cittera · ctiera · ictera

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "citer" and "citera" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\si.te\ versus \si.t(ə.)ʁa\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "citer" or "citera" show up more?
"citer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,596 in our French list, against #47,791 for "citera". 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 "citer" and "citera" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "citer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "citera" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #155,378 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "citer" and "citera" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "citera vs citerai". 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 #155,378 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