crackvscraquentWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#11,942
“crack” frequency rank
#41,204
“craquent” frequency rank
53146
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crack craquent
Definition Cheval de course performant ayant remporté de nombreuses victoires. Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent de craquer.

Same sound, different letters: crack vs craquent

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. crack runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against craquent's 8 (CCVCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
crack
8 ch
craquent

Homophone desk: crack vs craquent

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: crack and craquent carry the same recorded pronunciation, \kʁak\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53146, 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\. craquent is at rank #41,204, tagged as averb, pronounced \kʁak\.

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 53146, this pair ranks #142,748 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of crack vs craquent

Shared letters: acr. Private to "crack": k. Private to "craquent": enqtu.

"crack" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "craquent" · 8 letters · shape CCVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crack ← carck · ccrack · cracck · crackk · crakc · crcak · crrack · rcack
  • craquent ← carquent · ccraquent · craqeunt · craqquent · craquennt · craquentt · craquetn · craqunet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "crack" for "craquent" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "crack" is a noun and "craquent" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "crack" or "craquent" show up more?
"crack" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,942 in our French list, against #41,204 for "craquent". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "crack" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "craquent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #142,748 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crack" and "craquent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "craquement vs craquent". 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 #142,748 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