passervsposterTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#293
“passer” frequency rank
#5,385
“poster” frequency rank
5678
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature passer poster
Definition Aller d’un lieu à un autre, traverser un espace. Affiche dont la fonction est essentiellement décorative, qui n’est pas ou a cessé d’être publicitaire.

Where the eye mixes passer and poster

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

6 ch
passer
6 ch
poster

Visual trap between passer and poster

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: passer is \pa.se\ while poster is \pɔs.tɛʁ\. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5678, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passer is recorded at frequency rank #293, classified as averb, pronounced \pa.se\. poster is at rank #5,385, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔs.tɛʁ\.

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 5678, this pair ranks #428,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of passer vs poster

Shared letters: eprs. Private to "passer": a. Private to "poster": ot.

"passer" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "poster" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • passerapsser · paser · pasesr · passerr · passre · ppasser · psaser
  • posteropster · posetr · posster · posterr · postre · postter · potser · pposter

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "passer" and "poster" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "passer" is a verb and "poster" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "passer" or "poster"?
"passer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #293 in our French list, against #5,385 for "poster". 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 "passer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "poster" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #428,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "passer" and "poster" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pontet vs poster". 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 #428,353 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