felicevsfélinConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#45,040
“felice” frequency rank
#27,819
“félin” frequency rank
72859
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature felice félin
Definition Heureux. Qui se rapporte au chat ou aux félidés.

Where the eye mixes felice and félin

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. felice runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against félin's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
felice
5 ch
félin

Visual trap between felice and félin

A purely visual mix-up. felice (\fe.ˈli.t͡ʃe\) and félin (\fe.lɛ̃\) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 72859, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

felice is recorded at frequency rank #45,040, classified as anadj, pronounced \fe.ˈli.t͡ʃe\. félin is at rank #27,819, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fe.lɛ̃\.

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 72859, this pair ranks #42,522 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of felice vs félin

Shared letters: fil. Private to "felice": ce. Private to "félin": né.

"felice" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "félin" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • felice ← eflice · feilce · felcie · felicce · feliec · fellice · ffelice · fleice

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "felice" for "félin" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\fe.ˈli.t͡ʃe\ versus \fe.lɛ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "felice" or "félin" show up more?
"félin" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,819 in our French list, against #45,040 for "felice". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "felice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "félin" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #42,522 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "felice" and "félin" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "felice vs fétide". 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 #42,522 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