partivspastTell them apart

Which to use

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

#301
“parti” frequency rank
#28,284
“past” frequency rank
28585
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature parti past
Definition En état d’ivresse. Ancien.

Where the eye mixes parti and past

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

5 ch
parti
4 ch
past

Visual trap between parti and past

A purely visual mix-up. parti (\paʁ.ti\) and past (\past\) 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 28585, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

parti is recorded at frequency rank #301, classified as anadj, pronounced \paʁ.ti\. past is at rank #28,284, tagged as anadj, pronounced \past\.

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 28585, this pair ranks #321,888 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of parti vs past

Shared letters: apt. Private to "parti": ir. Private to "past": s.

"parti" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "past" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • partiaprti · parit · parrti · partti · patri · pparti · prati
  • pastapst · passt · pastt · pats · ppast · psat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "parti" for "past" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\paʁ.ti\ versus \past\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "parti" or "past"?
"parti" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #301 in our French list, against #28,284 for "past". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "parti" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "past" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #321,888 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "parti" and "past" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "past vs peso". 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 #321,888 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