cutanévscutanéesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#33,202
“cutané” frequency rank
#27,394
“cutanées” frequency rank
60596
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cutané cutanées
Definition Relatif à la peau. Féminin pluriel de cutané.

Same sound, different letters: cutané vs cutanées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

6 ch
cutané
8 ch
cutanées

Ear matches; page differs - cutané and cutanées

This is the hard kind. cutané and cutanées are pronounced identically (\ky.ta.ne\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “cutané” sits inside “cutanées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60596, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cutané is recorded at frequency rank #33,202, classified as anadj, pronounced \ky.ta.ne\. cutanées is at rank #27,394, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ky.ta.ne\.

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 60596, this pair ranks #96,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cutané vs cutanées

Shared letters: acntué. Private to "cutané": -. Private to "cutanées": es.

"cutané" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "cutanées" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cutané" and "cutanées" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ky.ta.ne\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "cutané" or "cutanées" show up more?
"cutanées" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,394 in our French list, against #33,202 for "cutané". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cutané" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cutanées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #96,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cutané" and "cutanées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "curage vs cutané". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #96,815 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