créolevscribleWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#15,118
“créole” frequency rank
#27,390
“crible” frequency rank
42508
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature créole crible
Definition Originellement, personne de famille européenne, née dans une des anciennes colonies des régions tropicales d'Amérique et de l'océan Indien, et plus particulièrement des Antilles. Instrument percé d’un grand nombre de trous qui sert à trier des objets de grosseur ou de qualité inégales, en laissant passer les uns et en repoussant les autres.

Where the eye mixes créole and crible

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. créole (CCVVCV) and crible (CCVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
créole
6 ch
crible

Why the eye confuses créole with crible

A purely visual mix-up. créole (\kʁe.ɔl\) and crible (\kʁibl\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42508, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

créole is recorded at frequency rank #15,118, classified as anoun, pronounced \kʁe.ɔl\. crible is at rank #27,390, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁibl\.

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 42508, this pair ranks #225,087 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of créole vs crible

Shared letters: celr. Private to "créole": oé. Private to "crible": bi.

"créole" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV  ·  "crible" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crible ← ccrible · cirble · crbile · cribble · cribel · criblle · crilbe · crrible

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "créole" and "crible" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kʁe.ɔl\ versus \kʁibl\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "créole" or "crible" show up more?
"créole" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,118 in our French list, against #27,390 for "crible". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "créole" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crible" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #225,087 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "créole" and "crible" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "crible vs crisse". 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 #225,087 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