ClarevsclausTell them apart

Quick tell: Clare is a name, claus is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Clare” is a name and “claus” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,527
“Clare” frequency rank
#39,220
“claus” frequency rank
69747
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Clare claus
Definition Bourgade située dans le district de St Edmundsbury, dans le Suffolk, en Angleterre. Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe claure.

Letter map: Clare vs claus

Shared letters muted; letters that set Clare and claus apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Clare (CCVCV) and claus (CCVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
Clare
5 ch
claus

Part-of-speech tell for Clare / claus

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Clare is aname and clausaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69747, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Clare is recorded at frequency rank #30,527, classified as aname. claus is at rank #39,220, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈklaws].

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 69747, this pair ranks #53,980 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Clare vs claus

Shared letters: acl. Private to "Clare": er. Private to "claus": su.

"Clare" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "claus" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Clare ← cclare · clarre · cllare · clrae · lcare
  • claus ← calus · cclaus · clasu · clauss · cllaus · cluas · lcaus

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Clare" and "claus" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Clare" is a name and "claus" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Clare" vs "claus" - which ranks higher?
"Clare" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,527 in our French list, against #39,220 for "claus". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "Clare" and "claus". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Clare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "claus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #53,980 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Clare" and "claus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "casus vs claus". 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 #53,980 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