Which to use
“coffee” and “cordée” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #22,521
- “coffee” frequency rank
- #40,693
- “cordée” frequency rank
- 63214
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | coffee | cordée |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Café. | Ce qui peut être entouré d'une corde. |
Where the eye mixes coffee and cordée
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. coffee and cordée follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Why the eye confuses coffee with cordée
A purely visual mix-up. coffee (\ˈkɔ.fi\) and cordée (\kɔʁ.de\) 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 63214, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
coffee is recorded at frequency rank #22,521, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈkɔ.fi\. cordée is at rank #40,693, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɔʁ.de\.
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 63214, this pair ranks #83,161 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of coffee vs cordée
Shared letters: ceo. Private to "coffee": f. Private to "cordée": dré.
"coffee" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV · "cordée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- coffee ← ccoffee · cfofee · cofee · cofefe · coffe · ocffee
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "coffee" for "cordée" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "coffee" or "cordée" show up more?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "coffee" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cordée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #83,161 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "coffee" and "cordée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "conde vs cordée". 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 #83,161 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.