partvspirTell them apart

Which to use

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

#193
“part” frequency rank
#37,481
“pir” frequency rank
37674
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature part pir
Definition Portion de quelque chose qui se divise entre plusieurs personnes. Maître spirituel, en Afghanistan.

Where the eye mixes part and pir

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
part
3 ch
pir

Why the eye confuses part with pir

A purely visual mix-up. part (\paʁ\) and pir (\piʁ\) 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 37674, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

part is recorded at frequency rank #193, classified as anoun, pronounced \paʁ\. pir is at rank #37,481, tagged as anoun, pronounced \piʁ\.

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 37674, this pair ranks #260,776 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of part vs pir

Shared letters: pr. Private to "part": at. Private to "pir": i.

"part" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "pir" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • partaprt · parrt · partt · patr · ppart

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "part" for "pir" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\paʁ\ versus \piʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "part" vs "pir" - which ranks higher?
"part" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #193 in our French list, against #37,481 for "pir". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "part" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #260,776 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "part" and "pir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pio vs pir". 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 #260,776 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