Which to use
“pendre” is a verb and “pensée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #14,110
- “pendre” frequency rank
- #1,534
- “pensée” frequency rank
- 15644
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | pendre | pensée |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Attacher une chose, une personne ou un animal en haut par une de ses parties, de manière qu’elle ne touche pas en bas. | Toute opération de l’esprit, de la conscience. |
Where the eye mixes pendre and pensée
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between pendre and pensée
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pendre is \pɑ̃dʁ\ while pensée is \pɑ̃.se\. 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 15644, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
pendre is recorded at frequency rank #14,110, classified as averb, pronounced \pɑ̃dʁ\. pensée is at rank #1,534, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɑ̃.se\.
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 15644, this pair ranks #391,476 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of pendre vs pensée
Shared letters: enp. Private to "pendre": dr. Private to "pensée": sé.
"pendre" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV · "pensée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- pendre ← epndre · pednre · penddre · pender · pendrre · penndre · penrde · pnedre
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "pendre" for "pensée" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "pendre" or "pensée" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "pendre" and "pensée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "pendre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "pensée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #391,476 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "pendre" and "pensée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pendre vs perdrez". 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 #391,476 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.