Which to use
“garde” and “guard” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #613
- “garde” frequency rank
- #45,087
- “guard” frequency rank
- 45700
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | garde | guard |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Soldat effectuant une garde, chargé de la protection d’une personne, de la surveillance d’un lieu. | Gardien (guard over prisoners). |
Where the eye mixes garde and guard
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: garde vs guard
A purely visual mix-up. garde (\ɡaʁd\) and guard (\ɡɑː(r)d\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45700, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
garde is recorded at frequency rank #613, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɡaʁd\. guard is at rank #45,087, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɡɑː(r)d\.
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 45700, this pair ranks #200,691 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of garde vs guard
Shared letters: adgr. Private to "garde": e. Private to "guard": u.
"garde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "guard" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "garde" and "guard" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "garde" or "guard" show up more?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "garde" and "guard" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "garde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "guard" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #200,691 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "garde" and "guard" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guard vs guay". 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 #200,691 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.