écartévsécarterConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#11,691
“écarté” frequency rank
#9,101
“écarter” frequency rank
20792
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature écarté écarter
Definition Jeu de cartes qui se joue à deux et où l’on peut écarter tout ou partie des cartes. Séparer ; éloigner.

Same sound, different letters: écarté vs écarter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. écarté runs 6 letters (VCVCCV) against écarter's 7 (VCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
écarté
7 ch
écarter

Homophone desk: écarté vs écarter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: écarté and écarter carry the same recorded pronunciation, \e.kaʁ.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20792, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

écarté is recorded at frequency rank #11,691, classified as anoun, pronounced \e.kaʁ.te\. écarter is at rank #9,101, tagged as averb, pronounced \e.kaʁ.te\.

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 20792, this pair ranks #366,481 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of écarté vs écarter

Shared letters: acrté. Private to "écarté": -. Private to "écarter": e.

"écarté" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "écarter" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "écarté" for "écarter" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "écarté" is a noun and "écarter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "écarté" or "écarter" show up more?
"écarter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,101 in our French list, against #11,691 for "écarté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "écarté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "écarter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #366,481 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "écarté" and "écarter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Easter vs écarter". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #366,481 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