cohenvscôtesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#9,620
“cohen” frequency rank
#3,395
“côtes” frequency rank
13015
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cohen côtes
Definition Celui qui, dans le judaïsme, est considéré comme un descendant de la race sacerdotale d’Aaron. Pluriel de côte.

Letter map: cohen vs côtes

Shared letters muted; letters that set cohen and côtes apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

5 ch
cohen
5 ch
côtes

Spelling & dictionary notes on cohen vs côtes

cohen and côtes are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13015, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cohen is recorded at frequency rank #9,620, classified as anoun. côtes is at rank #3,395, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kot\.

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 13015, this pair ranks #402,777 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cohen vs côtes

Shared letters: ce. Private to "cohen": hno. Private to "côtes": stô.

"cohen" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "côtes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cohenccohen · choen · coehn · cohenn · cohhen · cohne · ochen

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cohen" for "côtes" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary French text, does "cohen" or "côtes" show up more?
"côtes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,395 in our French list, against #9,620 for "cohen". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "cohen" and "côtes".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cohen" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "côtes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #402,777 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cohen" and "côtes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cohen vs coon". 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 #402,777 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