Which to use
“para” and “père” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #12,631
- “para” frequency rank
- #303
- “père” frequency rank
- 12934
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | para | père |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Parachutiste. | Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur. |
Where the eye mixes para and père
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. para and père follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between para and père
A purely visual mix-up. para (\pa.ʁa\) and père (\pɛʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12934, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
para is recorded at frequency rank #12,631, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.ʁa\. père is at rank #303, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ\.
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 12934, this pair ranks #403,130 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of para vs père
Shared letters: pr. Private to "para": a. Private to "père": eè.
"para" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- para ← apra · paar · ppara · praa
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "para" and "père" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "para" or "père"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "para" and "père" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "para" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "père" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #403,130 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "para" and "père" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "para vs PMR". 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 #403,130 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.