paradevspavageWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#8,900
“parade” frequency rank
#39,448
“pavage” frequency rank
48348
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature parade pavage
Definition Montre, étalage de quelque chose. Surface pavée.

Where the eye mixes parade and pavage

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. parade and pavage follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
parade
6 ch
pavage

Look-alike desk: parade vs pavage

A purely visual mix-up. parade (\pa.ʁad\) and pavage (\pa.vaʒ\) 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 48348, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

parade is recorded at frequency rank #8,900, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.ʁad\. pavage is at rank #39,448, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa.vaʒ\.

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 48348, this pair ranks #179,646 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of parade vs pavage

Shared letters: aep. Private to "parade": dr. Private to "pavage": gv.

"parade" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "pavage" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • parade ← aprade · paarde · paradde · paraed · pardae · parrade · pparade · praade
  • pavage ← apvage · paavge · pavaeg · pavagge · pavgae · pavvage · ppavage · pvaage

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "parade" for "pavage" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pa.ʁad\ versus \pa.vaʒ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "parade" or "pavage"?
"parade" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,900 in our French list, against #39,448 for "pavage". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "parade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pavage" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #179,646 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "parade" and "pavage" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pavage vs placage". 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 #179,646 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