pasquevspasséeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pasque is a conjunction, passée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pasque” is a conjunction and “passée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,705
“pasque” frequency rank
#2,439
“passée” frequency rank
51144
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pasque passée
Definition Parce que. Action de passer. Passage

Where the eye mixes pasque and passée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
pasque
6 ch
passée

Why the eye confuses pasque with passée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pasque is \pas.kə\ while passée is \pa.se\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (conjunction vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51144, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pasque is recorded at frequency rank #48,705, classified as aconj, pronounced \pas.kə\. passée is at rank #2,439, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa.se\.

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 51144, this pair ranks #157,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pasque vs passée

Shared letters: aeps. Private to "pasque": qu. Private to "passée": é.

"pasque" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "passée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pasqueapsque · paqsue · pasqeu · pasqque · passque · pasuqe · ppasque · psaque

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pasque" for "passée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pasque" is a conjunction and "passée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pasque" vs "passée" - which ranks higher?
"passée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,439 in our French list, against #48,705 for "pasque". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pasque" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "passée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #157,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pasque" and "passée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "parque vs pasque". 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 #157,237 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