cotéevscuvéeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#22,815
“cotée” frequency rank
#21,903
“cuvée” frequency rank
44718
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cotée cuvée
Definition Féminin singulier de coté. Quantité de vin qui se fait à la fois dans une cuve.

Where the eye mixes cotée and cuvée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cotée and cuvée follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
cotée
5 ch
cuvée

Why the eye confuses cotée with cuvée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cotée is \kɔ.te\ while cuvée is \ky.ve\. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44718, 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\. cuvée is at rank #21,903, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ky.ve\.

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 44718, this pair ranks #208,325 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cotée vs cuvée

Shared letters: ceé. Private to "cotée": ot. Private to "cuvée": uv.

"cotée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "cuvée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cotée" and "cuvée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cotée" is an adjective and "cuvée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "cotée" or "cuvée" show up more?
"cuvée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,903 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cotée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cuvée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #208,325 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cotée" and "cuvée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "conde vs cotée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #208,325 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