peachvspearWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“peach” and “pear” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#10,105
“peach” frequency rank
#15,676
“pear” frequency rank
25781
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature peach pear
Definition Any tree of species Prunus persica, native to China and now widely cultivated throughout temperate regions, having pink flowers and edible fruit. An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem.

Where the eye mixes peach and pear

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
peach
4 ch
pear

Why the eye confuses peach with pear

A purely visual mix-up. peach (/piːt͡ʃ/) and pear (/pɛə/) 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 25781, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

peach is recorded at frequency rank #10,105, classified as anoun, pronounced /piːt͡ʃ/. pear is at rank #15,676, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɛə/.

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 25781, this pair ranks #391,675 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of peach vs pear

Shared letters: aep. Private to "peach": ch. Private to "pear": r.

"peach" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "pear" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • peachepach · paech · peacch · peachh · peahc · pecah · ppeach
  • pearepar · paer · pearr · pera · ppear

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "peach" for "pear" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/piːt͡ʃ/ versus /pɛə/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "peach" or "pear" show up more?
"peach" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,105 in our English list, against #15,676 for "pear". 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 "peach" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pear" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #391,675 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "peach" and "pear" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pear vs PPA". 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 #391,675 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list