Which to use
“cobaye” is a noun and “côtoyé” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #30,099
- “cobaye” frequency rank
- #23,825
- “côtoyé” frequency rank
- 53924
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | cobaye | côtoyé |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Petit mammifère appelé aussi cochon d’Inde, rongeur d’origine sud-américaine. | Bordé. |
Where the eye mixes cobaye and côtoyé
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cobaye and côtoyé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: cobaye vs côtoyé
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cobaye is \kɔ.baj\ while côtoyé is \ko.twa.je\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53924, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
cobaye is recorded at frequency rank #30,099, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.baj\. côtoyé is at rank #23,825, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ko.twa.je\.
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 53924, this pair ranks #137,524 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of cobaye vs côtoyé
Shared letters: coy. Private to "cobaye": abe. Private to "côtoyé": téô.
"cobaye" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV · "côtoyé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- cobaye ← cboaye · ccobaye · coabye · cobaey · cobayye · cobbaye · cobyae · ocbaye
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "cobaye" and "côtoyé" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "cobaye" or "côtoyé" show up more?
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 "cobaye" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "côtoyé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #137,524 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "cobaye" and "côtoyé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cotons vs côtoyé". 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 #137,524 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.