crackvscranConfusable pair

Which to use

“crack” and “cran” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#11,942
“crack” frequency rank
#10,304
“cran” frequency rank
22246
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crack cran
Definition Cheval de course performant ayant remporté de nombreuses victoires. Entaille qu’on fait à un corps dur pour accrocher ou arrêter quelque chose.

Where the eye mixes crack and cran

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

5 ch
crack
4 ch
cran

Look-alike desk: crack vs cran

A purely visual mix-up. crack (\kʁak\) and cran (\kʁɑ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22246, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

crack is recorded at frequency rank #11,942, classified as anoun, pronounced \kʁak\. cran is at rank #10,304, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁɑ̃\.

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 22246, this pair ranks #359,058 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of crack vs cran

Shared letters: acr. Private to "crack": k. Private to "cran": n.

"crack" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "cran" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crackcarck · ccrack · cracck · crackk · crakc · crcak · crrack · rcack
  • crancarn · ccran · crann · crna · crran · rcan

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "crack" and "cran" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\kʁak\ versus \kʁɑ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "crack" or "cran" show up more?
"cran" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,304 in our French list, against #11,942 for "crack". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "crack" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cran" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #359,058 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crack" and "cran" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "crack vs croco". 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 #359,058 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