Which to use
“passé” and “pose” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #318
- “passé” frequency rank
- #1,147
- “pose” frequency rank
- 1465
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | passé | pose |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Le temps écoulé. | Action de poser, de mettre en place. |
Where the eye mixes passé and pose
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses passé with pose
A purely visual mix-up. passé (\pa.se\) and pose (\poz\) 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 1465, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
passé is recorded at frequency rank #318, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.se\. pose is at rank #1,147, tagged as anoun, pronounced \poz\.
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 1465, this pair ranks #438,022 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of passé vs pose
Shared letters: ps. Private to "passé": aé. Private to "pose": eo.
"passé" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "pose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- pose ← opse · poes · posse · ppose · psoe
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "passé" and "pose" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "passé" vs "pose" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "passé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "pose" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #438,022 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "passé" and "pose" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peso vs pose". 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 #438,022 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.