paintvspartTell them apart

Which to use

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

#28,676
“paint” frequency rank
#193
“part” frequency rank
28869
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paint part
Definition Peinture. Portion de quelque chose qui se divise entre plusieurs personnes.

Where the eye mixes paint and part

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
paint
4 ch
part

Why the eye confuses paint with part

A purely visual mix-up. paint (\peɪnt\) and part (\paʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28869, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paint is recorded at frequency rank #28,676, classified as anoun, pronounced \peɪnt\. part is at rank #193, tagged as anoun, pronounced \paʁ\.

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 28869, this pair ranks #320,157 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of paint vs part

Shared letters: apt. Private to "paint": in. Private to "part": r.

"paint" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "part" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • paintapint · painnt · paintt · panit · piant · ppaint
  • partaprt · parrt · partt · patr · ppart

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "paint" for "part" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\peɪnt\ versus \paʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "paint" vs "part" - which ranks higher?
"part" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #193 in our French list, against #28,676 for "paint". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "paint" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "part" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #320,157 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paint" and "part" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paint vs palin". 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 #320,157 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