ratévsRomeConfusable pair

Quick tell: raté is a adjective, Rome is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“raté” is an adjective and “Rome” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,217
“raté” frequency rank
#1,572
“Rome” frequency rank
4789
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature raté Rome
Definition Qui a raté, qui a échoué, qui n’a pas atteint son but. Nom de famille.

Letter map: raté vs Rome

Shared letters muted; letters that set raté and Rome apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

4 ch
raté
4 ch
Rome

Part-of-speech tell for raté / Rome

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: raté is anadjective and Romeaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4789, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

raté is recorded at frequency rank #3,217, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁa.te\. Rome is at rank #1,572, tagged as aname.

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 4789, this pair ranks #430,690 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of raté vs Rome

Shared letters: r. Private to "raté": até. Private to "Rome": emo.

"raté" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Rome" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Romermoe · roem · romme · rrome

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "raté" and "Rome" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "raté" is an adjective and "Rome" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "raté" or "Rome"?
"Rome" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,572 in our French list, against #3,217 for "raté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "raté" and "Rome". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "raté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Rome" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #430,690 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "raté" and "Rome" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "RAMQ vs raté". 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 #430,690 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