passeraientvspasseraitTell them apart

Which to use

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

#34,661
“passeraient” frequency rank
#10,371
“passerait” frequency rank
45032
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature passeraient passerait
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel du conditionnel présent de passer. Troisième personne du singulier du conditionnel présent de passer.

Same sound, different letters: passeraient vs passerait

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters.

11 ch
passeraient
9 ch
passerait

Homophone desk: passeraient vs passerait

This is the hard kind. passeraient and passerait are pronounced identically (\pa.sə.ʁɛ\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45032, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passeraient is recorded at frequency rank #34,661, classified as averb, pronounced \pa.sə.ʁɛ\. passerait is at rank #10,371, tagged as averb, pronounced \pa.sə.ʁɛ\.

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 45032, this pair ranks #205,921 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of passeraient vs passerait

Shared letters: aeiprst. Private to "passeraient": n. Private to "passerait": -.

"passeraient" · 11 letters · shape CVCCVCVVVCC  ·  "passerait" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • passeraientapsseraient · paseraient · pasesraient · passearient · passeraeint · passeraiennt · passeraientt · passeraietn
  • passeraitapsserait · paserait · pasesrait · passearit · passeraitt · passerati · passeriat · passerrait

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "passeraient" for "passerait" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pa.sə.ʁɛ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "passeraient" or "passerait"?
"passerait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,371 in our French list, against #34,661 for "passeraient". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "passeraient" / "passerait". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "passeraient" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "passerait" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #205,921 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "passeraient" and "passerait" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "passeraient vs passèrent". 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 #205,921 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