Which to use
“filer” and “frôler” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,321
- “filer” frequency rank
- #35,520
- “frôler” frequency rank
- 42841
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | filer | frôler |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Tordre ensemble plusieurs brins de chanvre, de lin, de soie, de laine, etc., pour qu’ils forment un fil. | Toucher légèrement en passant, ou passer très près, effleurer. |
Where the eye mixes filer and frôler
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. filer runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against frôler's 6 (CCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: filer vs frôler
A purely visual mix-up. filer (\fi.le\) and frôler (\fʁo.le\) 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 42841, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
filer is recorded at frequency rank #7,321, classified as averb, pronounced \fi.le\. frôler is at rank #35,520, tagged as averb, pronounced \fʁo.le\.
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 42841, this pair ranks #222,537 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of filer vs frôler
Shared letters: eflr. Private to "filer": i. Private to "frôler": ô.
"filer" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "frôler" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- filer ← ffiler · fielr · filerr · filler · filre · flier · ifler
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "filer" for "frôler" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "filer" or "frôler" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "filer" and "frôler" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "filer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "frôler" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #222,537 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "filer" and "frôler" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fioles vs frôler". 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 #222,537 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.