Which to use
“drain” and “draine” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #33,222
- “drain” frequency rank
- #44,427
- “draine” frequency rank
- 77649
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | drain | draine |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Une des trois électrodes d’un transistor à effet de champ (les deux autres sont appelées source et grille). Il joue un rôle analogue à l’anode dans les tubes à vide, ou le collecteur dans les transistors bipolaires. | Grive draine. |
Where the eye mixes drain and draine
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. drain runs 5 letters (CCVVC) against draine's 6 (CCVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Why the eye confuses drain with draine
A purely visual mix-up. drain (\dʁɛ̃\) and draine (\dʁɛn\) 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 extra letter(s) - “drain” sits inside “draine”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77649, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
drain is recorded at frequency rank #33,222, classified as anoun, pronounced \dʁɛ̃\. draine is at rank #44,427, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁɛn\.
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 77649, this pair ranks #27,794 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of drain vs draine
Shared letters: adinr. Private to "drain": -. Private to "draine": e.
"drain" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC · "draine" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "drain" and "draine" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "drain" or "draine"?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "drain" and "draine" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "drain" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "draine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #27,794 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "drain" and "draine" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "damné vs draine". 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 #27,794 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.