colèrevsColineWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: colère is a noun, Coline is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“colère” is a noun and “Coline” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,857
“colère” frequency rank
#38,207
“Coline” frequency rank
40064
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature colère Coline
Definition Réaction vive et parfois violente contre ce qui blesse un sentiment. Prénom féminin.

Where the eye mixes colère and Coline

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. colère and Coline follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
colère
6 ch
Coline

Look-alike desk: colère vs Coline

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: colère is \kɔ.lɛʁ\ while Coline is \kɔ.lin\. 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 (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40064, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

colère is recorded at frequency rank #1,857, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.lɛʁ\. Coline is at rank #38,207, tagged as aname, pronounced \kɔ.lin\.

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 40064, this pair ranks #243,320 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of colère vs Coline

Shared letters: celo. Private to "colère": rè. Private to "Coline": in.

"colère" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "Coline" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Coline ← ccoline · cloine · coilne · colien · colinne · colnie · ocline

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "colère" for "Coline" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "colère" is a noun and "Coline" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "colère" or "Coline" show up more?
"colère" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,857 in our French list, against #38,207 for "Coline". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "colère" and "Coline" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "colère" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Coline" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #243,320 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "colère" and "Coline" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Coline vs copiée". 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 #243,320 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