coincevscornéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: coince is a verb, cornée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“coince” is a verb and “cornée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,932
“coince” frequency rank
#33,194
“cornée” frequency rank
59126
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coince cornée
Definition Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent du verbe coincer. Partie transparente insérée dans la sclérotique de l’œil devant le cristallin.

Where the eye mixes coince and cornée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. coince (CVVCCV) and cornée (CVCCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
coince
6 ch
cornée

Look-alike desk: coince vs cornée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: coince is \kwɛ̃s\ while cornée is \kɔʁ.ne\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59126, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coince is recorded at frequency rank #25,932, classified as averb, pronounced \kwɛ̃s\. cornée is at rank #33,194, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɔʁ.ne\.

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 59126, this pair ranks #104,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coince vs cornée

Shared letters: ceno. Private to "coince": i. Private to "cornée": ré.

"coince" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "cornée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coince ← ccoince · cionce · coicne · coincce · coinec · coinnce · conice · ocince

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "coince" and "cornée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coince" is a verb and "cornée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "coince" or "cornée" show up more?
"coince" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,932 in our French list, against #33,194 for "cornée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "coince" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cornée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #104,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coince" and "cornée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "conde vs cornée". 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 #104,922 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