peintesvspépitesWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#19,364
“peintes” frequency rank
#19,122
“pépites” frequency rank
38486
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature peintes pépites
Definition Féminin pluriel de peint. Pluriel de pépite.

Where the eye mixes peintes and pépites

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. peintes (CVVCCVC) and pépites (CVCVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
peintes
7 ch
pépites

Visual trap between peintes and pépites

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: peintes is \pɛ̃t\ while pépites is \pe.pit\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 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 38486, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

peintes is recorded at frequency rank #19,364, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɛ̃t\. pépites is at rank #19,122, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pe.pit\.

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 38486, this pair ranks #254,927 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of peintes vs pépites

Shared letters: eipst. Private to "peintes": n. Private to "pépites": é.

"peintes" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC  ·  "pépites" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • peintes ← epintes · peinets · peinntes · peintess · peintse · peinttes · peitnes · penites

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "peintes" and "pépites" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "peintes" is an adjective and "pépites" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "peintes" or "pépites" show up more?
"pépites" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,122 in our French list, against #19,364 for "peintes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "peintes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pépites" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #254,927 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "peintes" and "pépites" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peintes vs pètes". 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 #254,927 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