cotéevscôtoieWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#22,815
“cotée” frequency rank
#20,109
“côtoie” frequency rank
42924
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cotée côtoie
Definition Féminin singulier de coté. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de côtoyer.

Where the eye mixes cotée and côtoie

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
cotée
6 ch
côtoie

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cotée is \kɔ.te\ while côtoie is \ko.twa\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42924, 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\. côtoie is at rank #20,109, tagged as averb, pronounced \ko.twa\.

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 42924, this pair ranks #221,891 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cotée vs côtoie

Shared letters: ceot. Private to "cotée": é. Private to "côtoie": .

"cotée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "côtoie" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cotée" and "côtoie" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cotée" is an adjective and "côtoie" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cotée" or "côtoie"?
"côtoie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,109 in our French list, against #22,815 for "cotée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list