refilévsrétineWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: refilé is a verb, rétine is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“refilé” is a verb and “rétine” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,239
“refilé” frequency rank
#27,956
“rétine” frequency rank
63195
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature refilé rétine
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de refiler. Membrane formée par la terminaison du nerf optique dans le fond de l’œil et sur laquelle viennent se former les images des objets provoquant les sensations lumineuses.

Where the eye mixes refilé and rétine

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. refilé and rétine follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
refilé
6 ch
rétine

Look-alike desk: refilé vs rétine

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: refilé is \ʁə.fi.le\ while rétine is \ʁe.tin\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63195, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

refilé is recorded at frequency rank #35,239, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁə.fi.le\. rétine is at rank #27,956, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁe.tin\.

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 63195, this pair ranks #83,278 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of refilé vs rétine

Shared letters: eiré. Private to "refilé": fl. Private to "rétine": nt.

"refilé" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "rétine" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "refilé" for "rétine" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "refilé" is a verb and "rétine" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "refilé" vs "rétine" - which ranks higher?
"rétine" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,956 in our French list, against #35,239 for "refilé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "refilé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rétine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #83,278 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "refilé" and "rétine" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "recife vs refilé". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #83,278 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