1ervspremierWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“1er” and “premier” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#893
“1er” frequency rank
#145
“premier” frequency rank
1038
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature 1er premier
Definition Premier. Adjectif numéral ordinal correspondant au nombre 1.

Same sound, different letters: 1er vs premier

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters. 1er runs 2 letters (VC) against premier's 7 (CCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
1er
7 ch
premier

Homophone desk: 1er vs premier

This is the hard kind. 1er and premier are pronounced identically (\pʁə.mje\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1038, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

1er is recorded at frequency rank #893, classified as anadj, pronounced \pʁə.mje\. premier is at rank #145, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pʁə.mje\.

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 1038, this pair ranks #438,730 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of 1er vs premier

Shared letters: er. Private to "1er": -. Private to "premier": imp.

"1er" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "premier" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • premier ← permier · ppremier · preimer · premeir · premierr · premire · premmier · prmeier

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "1er" and "premier" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pʁə.mje\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "1er" vs "premier" - which ranks higher?
"premier" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #145 in our French list, against #893 for "1er". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"1er" and "premier" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "1er" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "premier" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #438,730 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "1er" and "premier" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "1D vs 1er". 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 #438,730 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list