quadravsquatreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: quadra is a noun, quatre is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“quadra” is a noun and “quatre” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,884
“quadra” frequency rank
#320
“quatre” frequency rank
50204
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature quadra quatre
Definition Quadragénaire. Trois plus un, adjectif numéral cardinal correspondant au nombre 4.

Where the eye mixes quadra and quatre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. quadra and quatre follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
quadra
6 ch
quatre

Look-alike desk: quadra vs quatre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: quadra is \kwa.dʁa\ while quatre is \katʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50204, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

quadra is recorded at frequency rank #49,884, classified as anoun, pronounced \kwa.dʁa\. quatre is at rank #320, tagged as anadj, pronounced \katʁ\.

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 50204, this pair ranks #164,478 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of quadra vs quatre

Shared letters: aqru. Private to "quadra": d. Private to "quatre": et.

"quadra" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "quatre" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • quadra ← qaudra · qquadra · quadar · quaddra · quadrra · quarda · qudara · uqadra
  • quatre ← qautre · qquatre · quarte · quater · quatrre · quattre · qutare · uqatre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "quadra" and "quatre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "quadra" is a noun and "quatre" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "quadra" or "quatre" show up more?
"quatre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #320 in our French list, against #49,884 for "quadra". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "quadra" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "quatre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #164,478 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "quadra" and "quatre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "quadra vs quadrant". 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 #164,478 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