pasovspavotWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#32,105
“paso” frequency rank
#36,524
“pavot” frequency rank
68629
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paso pavot
Definition Pasodoble. Plante qui porte de grandes fleurs à quatre pétales, qui contient de l’opium et dont la graine donne l’huile d’œillette.

Where the eye mixes paso and pavot

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. paso runs 4 letters (CVCV) against pavot's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
paso
5 ch
pavot

Visual trap between paso and pavot

A purely visual mix-up. paso (\pa.so\) and pavot (\pa.vo\) 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 68629, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paso is recorded at frequency rank #32,105, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.so\. pavot is at rank #36,524, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa.vo\.

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 68629, this pair ranks #58,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of paso vs pavot

Shared letters: aop. Private to "paso": s. Private to "pavot": tv.

"paso" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "pavot" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • paso ← apso · paos · passo · ppaso · psao
  • pavot ← apvot · paovt · pavott · pavto · pavvot · ppavot · pvaot

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "paso" for "pavot" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pa.so\ versus \pa.vo\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "paso" or "pavot"?
"paso" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,105 in our French list, against #36,524 for "pavot". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "paso" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pavot" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #58,377 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paso" and "pavot" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pavot vs pivots". 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 #58,377 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