sendvssenteWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#36,156
“send” frequency rank
#13,474
“sente” frequency rank
49630
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature send sente
Definition Chose, objet. Petit sentier ou petite voie, souvent non goudronnée, et passant au travers des bois.

Where the eye mixes send and sente

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. send runs 4 letters (CVCC) against sente's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
send
5 ch
sente

Visual trap between send and sente

A purely visual mix-up. send (\ˈsend\) and sente (\sɑ̃t\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49630, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

send is recorded at frequency rank #36,156, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈsend\. sente is at rank #13,474, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɑ̃t\.

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 49630, this pair ranks #169,086 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of send vs sente

Shared letters: ens. Private to "send": d. Private to "sente": t.

"send" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "sente" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • send ← esnd · sedn · sendd · sennd · sned · ssend
  • sente ← esnte · senet · sennte · sentte · setne · snete · ssente

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "send" and "sente" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ˈsend\ versus \sɑ̃t\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "send" or "sente"?
"sente" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,474 in our French list, against #36,156 for "send". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "send" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sente" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #169,086 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "send" and "sente" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "send vs Sepp". 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 #169,086 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