parcevspèreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: parce is a preposition, père is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“parce” is a preposition and “père” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#148
“parce” frequency rank
#303
“père” frequency rank
451
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature parce père
Definition Utilisé seulement dans la locution parce que Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur.

Where the eye mixes parce and père

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

5 ch
parce
4 ch
père

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: parce is \paʁs\ while père is \pɛʁ\. 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 (preposition vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 451, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

parce is recorded at frequency rank #148, classified as aprep, pronounced \paʁs\. 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 451, this pair ranks #439,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of parce vs père

Shared letters: epr. Private to "parce": ac. Private to "père": è.

"parce" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • parceaprce · pacre · parcce · parec · parrce · pparce · prace

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "parce" and "père" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "parce" is a preposition and "père" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "parce" or "père"?
"parce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #148 in our French list, against #303 for "père". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "parce" and "père". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "parce" 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 #439,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "parce" and "père" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "père vs prep". 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list