referavsretiraWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#40,460
“refera” frequency rank
#23,349
“retira” frequency rank
63809
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature refera retira
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du futur de refaire. Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe retirer.

Where the eye mixes refera and retira

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. refera and retira follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
refera
6 ch
retira

Visual trap between refera and retira

A purely visual mix-up. refera (\ʁə.fə.ʁa\) and retira (\ʁə.ti.ʁa\) 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 63809, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

refera is recorded at frequency rank #40,460, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁə.fə.ʁa\. retira is at rank #23,349, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁə.ti.ʁa\.

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 63809, this pair ranks #80,107 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of refera vs retira

Shared letters: aer. Private to "refera": f. Private to "retira": it.

"refera" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "retira" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • referaerfera · reefra · refear · referra · reffera · refrea · rfeera · rrefera
  • retiraertira · reitra · retiar · retirra · retria · rettira · rretira · rteira

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "refera" for "retira" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʁə.fə.ʁa\ versus \ʁə.ti.ʁa\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "refera" vs "retira" - which ranks higher?
"retira" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,349 in our French list, against #40,460 for "refera". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "refera" and "retira" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "refera" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "retira" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #80,107 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "refera" and "retira" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "refera vs referai". 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 #80,107 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