cradevscrêpeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#36,340
“crade” frequency rank
#19,798
“crêpe” frequency rank
56138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crade crêpe
Definition Sale. Étoffe claire, légère et comme frisée, faite de laine fine ou de soie crue et gommée.

Where the eye mixes crade and crêpe

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

5 ch
crade
5 ch
crêpe

Look-alike desk: crade vs crêpe

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: crade is \kʁad\ while crêpe is \kʁɛp\. 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 56138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

crade is recorded at frequency rank #36,340, classified as anadj, pronounced \kʁad\. crêpe is at rank #19,798, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁɛp\.

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 56138, this pair ranks #123,009 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of crade vs crêpe

Shared letters: cer. Private to "crade": ad. Private to "crêpe": pê.

"crade" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "crêpe" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crade ← ccrade · cradde · craed · crdae · crrade · rcade

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "crade" for "crêpe" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "crade" is an adjective and "crêpe" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "crade" vs "crêpe" - which ranks higher?
"crêpe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,798 in our French list, against #36,340 for "crade". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "crade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crêpe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #123,009 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crade" and "crêpe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "crade vs curage". 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 #123,009 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