parusvspasWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: parus is a verb, pas is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“parus” is a verb and “pas” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,505
“parus” frequency rank
#15
“pas” frequency rank
17520
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature parus pas
Definition Participe passé masculin pluriel de paraître. Mouvement que fait une personne ou un animal en mettant un pied devant l’autre pour marcher.

Where the eye mixes parus and pas

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

5 ch
parus
3 ch
pas

Visual trap between parus and pas

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: parus is \pa.ʁy\ while pas is \pa\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17520, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

parus is recorded at frequency rank #17,505, classified as averb, pronounced \pa.ʁy\. pas is at rank #15, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa\.

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 17520, this pair ranks #382,765 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of parus vs pas

Shared letters: aps. Private to "parus": ru. Private to "pas": -.

"parus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "pas" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • parusaprus · parrus · parsu · paruss · paurs · pparus · praus

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "parus" for "pas" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "parus" is a verb and "pas" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "parus" or "pas"?
"pas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our French list, against #17,505 for "parus". 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 "parus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #382,765 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "parus" and "pas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "parias vs parus". 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 #382,765 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