racontévsrefonteTell them apart

Quick tell: raconté is a verb, refonte is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“raconté” is a verb and “refonte” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,069
“raconté” frequency rank
#13,895
“refonte” frequency rank
18964
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature raconté refonte
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de raconter. Action de remettre à la fonte, en parlant spécialement des monnaies dont on fait de nouvelles espèces.

Where the eye mixes raconté and refonte

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

7 ch
raconté
7 ch
refonte

Visual trap between raconté and refonte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: raconté is \ʁa.kɔ̃.te\ while refonte is \ʁə.fɔ̃t\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18964, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

raconté is recorded at frequency rank #5,069, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁa.kɔ̃.te\. refonte is at rank #13,895, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁə.fɔ̃t\.

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 18964, this pair ranks #375,711 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of raconté vs refonte

Shared letters: nort. Private to "raconté": acé. Private to "refonte": ef.

"raconté" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "refonte" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • refonteerfonte · reffonte · refnote · refonet · refonnte · refontte · refotne · reofnte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "raconté" and "refonte" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "raconté" is a verb and "refonte" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "raconté" vs "refonte" - which ranks higher?
"raconté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,069 in our French list, against #13,895 for "refonte". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "raconté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "refonte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #375,711 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "raconté" and "refonte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "refonte vs remonta". 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 #375,711 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