persvspetWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pers is a pronoun, pet is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pers” is a pronoun and “pet” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,278
“pers” frequency rank
#3,323
“pet” frequency rank
39601
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pers pet
Definition That which belongs to per, theirs (singular): possessive case of per, used in place of a noun. An animal kept as a companion or otherwise for pleasure, rather than for some practical benefit or use.

Letter map: pers vs pet

Shared letters muted; letters that set pers and pet apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
pers
3 ch
pet

Role in the sentence - pers and pet

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pers is apronoun and petanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39601, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pers is recorded at frequency rank #36,278, classified as apron. pet is at rank #3,323, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɛt/.

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 39601, this pair ranks #275,195 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pers vs pet

Shared letters: ep. Private to "pers": rs. Private to "pet": t.

"pers" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "pet" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perseprs · perrs · pesr · ppers

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pers" and "pet" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pers" is a pronoun and "pet" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "pers" or "pet" show up more?
"pet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,323 in our English list, against #36,278 for "pers". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "pers" vs "pet" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pers" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #275,195 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pers" and "pet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pecs vs pers". 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 #275,195 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