recifevsreculéConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#49,319
“recife” frequency rank
#16,720
“reculé” frequency rank
66039
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature recife reculé
Definition Récif, écueil. Qui est éloigné, lointain.

Letter map: recife vs reculé

Shared letters muted; letters that set recife and reculé apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. recife and reculé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
recife
6 ch
reculé

Grammar separator: recife vs reculé

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: recife is anoun and reculéanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66039, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

recife is recorded at frequency rank #49,319, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʀɨ.sˈi.fɨ\. reculé is at rank #16,720, tagged as anadj.

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 66039, this pair ranks #69,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of recife vs reculé

Shared letters: cer. Private to "recife": fi. Private to "reculé": lué.

"recife" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "reculé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • recife ← ercife · rceife · reccife · recfie · recief · reciffe · reicfe · rrecife

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "recife" and "reculé" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "recife" is a noun and "reculé" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "recife" or "reculé"?
"reculé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,720 in our French list, against #49,319 for "recife". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "recife" and "reculé". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "recife" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "reculé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "recife" and "reculé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "recife vs recréé". 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 #69,596 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