pavésvspavotWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pavés is a adjective, pavot is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pavés” is an adjective and “pavot” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14,754
“pavés” frequency rank
#36,524
“pavot” frequency rank
51278
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pavés pavot
Definition Masculin pluriel de pavé. 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 pavés and pavot

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pavés and pavot follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
pavés
5 ch
pavot

Look-alike desk: pavés vs pavot

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pavés is \pa.ve\ while pavot is \pa.vo\. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51278, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pavés is recorded at frequency rank #14,754, classified as anadj, pronounced \pa.ve\. 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 51278, this pair ranks #156,236 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pavés vs pavot

Shared letters: apv. Private to "pavés": sé. Private to "pavot": ot.

"pavés" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "pavot" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pavot ← apvot · paovt · pavott · pavto · pavvot · ppavot · pvaot

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pavés" for "pavot" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pavés" is an adjective and "pavot" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pavés" or "pavot"?
"pavés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,754 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.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pavés" 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 #156,236 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pavés" 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 #156,236 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