Which to use
“reculé” is an adjective and “refuse” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #16,720
- “reculé” frequency rank
- #2,013
- “refuse” frequency rank
- 18733
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | reculé | refuse |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui est éloigné, lointain. | Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de refuser. |
Letter map: reculé vs refuse
Shared letters muted; letters that set reculé and refuse apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Part-of-speech tell for reculé / refuse
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: reculé is anadjective and refuseaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18733, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
reculé is recorded at frequency rank #16,720, classified as anadj. refuse is at rank #2,013, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁə.fyz\.
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 18733, this pair ranks #376,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of reculé vs refuse
Shared letters: eru. Private to "reculé": clé. Private to "refuse": fs.
"reculé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "refuse" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- refuse ← erfuse · reffuse · refsue · refues · refusse · reufse · rfeuse · rrefuse
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "reculé" for "refuse" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "reculé" or "refuse" show up more?
Useful next steps
You've compared "reculé" and "refuse". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "reculé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "refuse" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #376,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "reculé" and "refuse" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "recife vs reculé". 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 #376,849 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.