Pau vs per, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“Pau” is a name and “per” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,946
“Pau” frequency rank: #673
“per” frequency rank: 50619
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Pau	per
Definition	Stadt in Südfrankreich	mittels

Letter map: Pau vs per

Shared letters muted; letters that set Pau and per apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

Pau

3 ch

per

Role in the sentence - Pau and per

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Pau is aname and perapreposition. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50619, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Pau is recorded at frequency rank #49,946, classified as aname, pronounced […]. per is at rank #673, tagged as aprep, pronounced [pɛʁ].

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 50619, this pair ranks #1,166,845 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Pau vs per

Shared letters: p. Private to "Pau": au. Private to "per": er.

"Pau" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "per" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Pau" for "per" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Pau" is a name and "per" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "Pau" or "per"?

"per" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #673 in our German list, against #49,946 for "Pau". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "Pau" vs "per" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "Pau" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "per" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,166,845 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Pau" and "per" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Pau vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,166,845 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.