Pears vs per, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#23,627
“Pears” frequency rank: #339
“per” frequency rank: 23966
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Pears	per
Definition	A surname transferred from the given name.	For each.

Letter map: Pears vs per

Shared letters muted; letters that set Pears and per apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

Pears

3 ch

per

Grammar separator: Pears vs per

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Pears is aname and perapreposition. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23966, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Pears is recorded at frequency rank #23,627, classified as aname. per is at rank #339, tagged as aprep, pronounced /pɜː/.

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 23966, this pair ranks #405,490 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Pears vs per

Shared letters: epr. Private to "Pears": as. Private to "per": -.

"Pears" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "per" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

Pears ← epars · paers · pearrs · pearss · peasr · peras · ppears

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Pears" and "per" be used interchangeably?

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

Frequency check: "Pears" vs "per" - which ranks higher?

"per" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #339 in our English list, against #23,627 for "Pears". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "Pears" and "per". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "Pears" 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 #405,490 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Pears" and "per" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Pears vs pecs". 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 #405,490 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.