Which to use
“per” is a preposition and “pert” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #339
- “per” frequency rank
- #47,823
- “pert” frequency rank
- 48162
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | per | pert |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | For each. | Attractive. |
Where the eye mixes per and pert
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: per is /pɜː/ while pert is /pɜːt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “per” sits inside “pert”, and the parts of speech differ too (preposition vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48162, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
per is recorded at frequency rank #339, classified as aprep, pronounced /pɜː/. pert is at rank #47,823, tagged as anadj, pronounced /pɜːt/.
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 48162, this pair ranks #195,667 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of per vs pert
Shared letters: epr. Private to "per": -. Private to "pert": t.
"per" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "pert" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- pert ← eprt · perrt · pertt · ppert · pret