cottavsquotaTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#46,090
“cotta” frequency rank
#17,535
“quota” frequency rank
63625
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cotta quota
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de cotter. Quantité limitée ou réglementaire.

Same sound, different letters: cotta vs quota

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. cotta (CVCCV) and quota (CVVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
cotta
5 ch
quota

Homophone desk: cotta vs quota

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: cotta and quota carry the same recorded pronunciation, \kɔ.ta\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is averb, the other anoun, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63625, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cotta is recorded at frequency rank #46,090, classified as averb, pronounced \kɔ.ta\. quota is at rank #17,535, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.ta\.

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 63625, this pair ranks #81,045 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cotta vs quota

Shared letters: aot. Private to "cotta": c. Private to "quota": qu.

"cotta" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "quota" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cottaccotta · cotat · ctota · octta
  • quotaqouta · qquota · quoat · quotta · qutoa · uqota

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cotta" and "quota" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cotta" is a verb and "quota" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cotta" or "quota"?
"quota" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,535 in our French list, against #46,090 for "cotta". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"cotta" and "quota" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cotta" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "quota" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #81,045 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cotta" and "quota" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cotta vs coupa". 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 #81,045 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