reculévsruleTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#16,720
“reculé” frequency rank
#39,521
“rule” frequency rank
56241
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature reculé rule
Definition Qui est éloigné, lointain. Règle (ordre).

Letter map: reculé vs rule

Shared letters muted; letters that set reculé and rule apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

6 ch
reculé
4 ch
rule

Part-of-speech tell for reculé / rule

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: reculé is anadjective and ruleanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56241, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

reculé is recorded at frequency rank #16,720, classified as anadj. rule is at rank #39,521, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɹuːl\.

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 56241, this pair ranks #122,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of reculé vs rule

Shared letters: elru. Private to "reculé": . Private to "rule": -.

"reculé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "rule" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • rulerlue · rrule · ruel · rulle · urle

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "reculé" for "rule" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "reculé" is an adjective and "rule" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "reculé" or "rule" show up more?
"reculé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,720 in our French list, against #39,521 for "rule". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "reculé" and "rule".

  • Full dictionary entry for "reculé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rule" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #122,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "reculé" and "rule" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "râles vs rule". 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 #122,329 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