palinvspaonTell them apart

Quick tell: palin is a verb, paon is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“palin” is a verb and “paon” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,700
“palin” frequency rank
#28,277
“paon” frequency rank
76977
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature palin paon
Definition Première personne du singulier du futur de l’indicatif du verbe palat. Grand oiseau domesticable, de l’ordre des gallinacés, dont le cri est strident, qui a un beau plumage mordoré, une petite aigrette sur la tête et dont la queue se compose de longues plumes couvertes d’ocelles, marques de différentes couleurs en forme d’yeux.

Where the eye mixes palin and paon

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. palin runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against paon's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
palin
4 ch
paon

Visual trap between palin and paon

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: palin is \ˈpɑː.lĩn\ while paon is \pɑ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76977, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

palin is recorded at frequency rank #48,700, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈpɑː.lĩn\. paon is at rank #28,277, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɑ̃\.

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 76977, this pair ranks #29,648 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of palin vs paon

Shared letters: anp. Private to "palin": il. Private to "paon": o.

"palin" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "paon" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palin ← pailn · palinn · pallin · palni · ppalin
  • paon ← apon · pano · paonn · poan · ppaon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "palin" for "paon" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "palin" is a verb and "paon" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "palin" or "paon"?
"paon" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,277 in our French list, against #48,700 for "palin". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "palin" and "paon" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "palin" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "paon" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #29,648 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "palin" and "paon" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "palin vs purin". 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 #29,648 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