cotéevscoterTell them apart

Quick tell: cotée is a adjective, coter is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cotée” is an adjective and “coter” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,815
“cotée” frequency rank
#37,252
“coter” frequency rank
60067
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cotée coter
Definition Féminin singulier de coté. Marquer suivant l’ordre des lettres ou des nombres, numéroter.

Same sound, different letters: cotée vs coter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. cotée (CVCVV) and coter (CVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
cotée
5 ch
coter

Same sound, different spelling - cotée / coter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: cotée and coter carry the same recorded pronunciation, \kɔ.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60067, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cotée is recorded at frequency rank #22,815, classified as anadj, pronounced \kɔ.te\. coter is at rank #37,252, tagged as averb, pronounced \kɔ.te\.

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 60067, this pair ranks #99,629 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cotée vs coter

Shared letters: ceot. Private to "cotée": é. Private to "coter": r.

"cotée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "coter" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coter ← ccoter · coetr · coterr · cotter · ctoer · octer

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cotée" and "coter" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cotée" is an adjective and "coter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cotée" vs "coter" - which ranks higher?
"cotée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,815 in our French list, against #37,252 for "coter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "cotée" / "coter". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cotée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #99,629 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cotée" and "coter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "citera vs coter". 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 #99,629 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