pir
\piʁ\
The verdict
“pir” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #37,481) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #37,481
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Maître spirituel, en Afghanistan.
Corpus desk
Index FR-pir · pir · French
pir · rank #37,481 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #37,481
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH Pigalle
Nearest frequency peer: Pigalle (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « pir »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Phèdre
Phèdre
62,523 corpus weight
- Pigalle
Pigalle
62,521 corpus weight
- pir
pir
62,520 corpus weight
- pirogue
pirogue
62,519 corpus weight
- plaident
plaident
62,518 corpus weight
- pliant
pliant
62,517 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « pir » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pir |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \piʁ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #37,481 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « pir »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for pir is neighbouring look-alikes ("pu", "PS", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \piʁ\. Frequency #37,481 among 6,826 “P” headwords. Gloss: "Maître spirituel, en Afghanistan.".
pir doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pu", "PS", "PQ", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is pir, spelled P-I-R.
Definition
- 1Maître spirituel, en Afghanistan.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pir appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Dans ce monde des derviches, des pirs, des asiks, les colombes sont en général de vraies colombes, mais quelquefois aussi des maîtres momentanément métamorphosés en colombe, en huppe, en rossignol ou en grue cendrée, pour des raisons diverses mais dont il faut d’emblée exclure l’esprit de facétie.
Dans l’Orient que j’ai connu et où j’ai été formé, que ce soit le monde hindou, bouddhiste tibétain et zen ou le soufisme, la vénération pour le maître est immense. Certes, on ne se prosternait pas devant un “pir” afghan mais on embrassait sa main ou son vêtement.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "pir", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).