ordervsôterTell them apart

Which to use

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

#21,713
“order” frequency rank
#17,605
“ôter” frequency rank
39318
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature order ôter
Definition Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de ordern. Tirer une chose de la place où elle est.

Where the eye mixes order and ôter

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
order
4 ch
ôter

Why the eye confuses order with ôter

A purely visual mix-up. order (\ˈɔʁdɐ\) and ôter (\o.te\) 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 39318, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

order is recorded at frequency rank #21,713, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈɔʁdɐ\. ôter is at rank #17,605, tagged as averb, pronounced \o.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 39318, this pair ranks #248,894 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of order vs ôter

Shared letters: er. Private to "order": do. Private to "ôter": .

"order" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "ôter" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • orderodrer · ordder · orderr · oredr · orrder · roder

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "order" and "ôter" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ˈɔʁdɐ\ versus \o.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "order" or "ôter" show up more?
"ôter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,605 in our French list, against #21,713 for "order". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "order" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ôter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #248,894 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "order" and "ôter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "order vs ordo". 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 #248,894 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