recifevsregimeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,319
“recife” frequency rank
#25,105
“regime” frequency rank
74424
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature recife regime
Definition Récif, écueil. Régime.

Where the eye mixes recife and regime

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. recife and regime 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
regime

Look-alike desk: recife vs regime

A purely visual mix-up. recife (\ʀɨ.sˈi.fɨ\) and regime (\ɹeɪ.ˈʒiːm\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74424, 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\. regime is at rank #25,105, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɹeɪ.ˈʒiːm\.

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 74424, this pair ranks #37,207 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of recife vs regime

Shared letters: eir. Private to "recife": cf. Private to "regime": gm.

"recife" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "regime" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • recife ← ercife · rceife · reccife · recfie · recief · reciffe · reicfe · rrecife
  • regime ← ergime · reggime · regiem · regimme · regmie · reigme · rgeime · rregime

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "recife" for "regime" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʀɨ.sˈi.fɨ\ versus \ɹeɪ.ˈʒiːm\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "recife" or "regime"?
"regime" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,105 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

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "recife" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "regime" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #37,207 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "recife" and "regime" 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 #37,207 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