raclevsrafleConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#48,135
“racle” frequency rank
#25,461
“rafle” frequency rank
73596
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature racle rafle
Definition Outil servant à racler. Filet garni d’ailes, possédant des ouvertures à chaque extrémité.

Where the eye mixes racle and rafle

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

5 ch
racle
5 ch
rafle

Look-alike desk: racle vs rafle

A purely visual mix-up. racle (\ʁakl\) and rafle (\ʁɑfl\) 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 a single letter - c in “racle” becomes f in “rafle”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73596, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

racle is recorded at frequency rank #48,135, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʁakl\. rafle is at rank #25,461, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁɑfl\.

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 73596, this pair ranks #39,909 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of racle vs rafle

Shared letters: aelr. Private to "racle": c. Private to "rafle": f.

"racle" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "rafle" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • racle ← arcle · raccle · racel · raclle · ralce · rcale · rracle
  • rafle ← arfle · rafel · raffle · raflle · ralfe · rfale · rrafle

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "racle" for "rafle" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʁakl\ versus \ʁɑfl\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "racle" or "rafle"?
"rafle" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,461 in our French list, against #48,135 for "racle". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "racle" and "rafle" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "racle" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rafle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,909 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "racle" and "rafle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "racle vs râles". 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 #39,909 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