sakévssameWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#43,653
“saké” frequency rank
#17,557
“same” frequency rank
61210
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature saké same
Definition Vin de riz japonais, produit par fermentation comme la bière, titrant de 14° à 17°. Langue finno-ougrienne parlée en Laponie. Code ISO 639-2 : smi, code général à tous les dialectes sames.

Where the eye mixes saké and same

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
saké
4 ch
same

Visual trap between saké and same

A purely visual mix-up. saké (\sa.ke\) and same (\sam\) 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 61210, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

saké is recorded at frequency rank #43,653, classified as anoun, pronounced \sa.ke\. same is at rank #17,557, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sam\.

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 61210, this pair ranks #93,501 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of saké vs same

Shared letters: as. Private to "saké": . Private to "same": em.

"saké" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "same" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sameasme · saem · samme · smae · ssame

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "saké" and "same" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\sa.ke\ versus \sam\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "saké" or "same"?
"same" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,557 in our French list, against #43,653 for "saké". 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 "saké" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "same" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #93,501 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "saké" and "same" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "saké vs stase". 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 #93,501 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