pendrevsperdueWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pendre is a verb, perdue is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pendre” is a verb and “perdue” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14,110
“pendre” frequency rank
#4,009
“perdue” frequency rank
18119
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pendre perdue
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. Féminin singulier de perdu.

Where the eye mixes pendre and perdue

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

6 ch
pendre
6 ch
perdue

Why the eye confuses pendre with perdue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pendre is \pɑ̃dʁ\ while perdue is \pɛʁ.dy\. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18119, 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\. perdue is at rank #4,009, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁ.dy\.

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 18119, this pair ranks #379,896 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pendre vs perdue

Shared letters: depr. Private to "pendre": n. Private to "perdue": u.

"pendre" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV  ·  "perdue" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pendreepndre · pednre · penddre · pender · pendrre · penndre · penrde · pnedre
  • perdueeprdue · pedrue · perddue · perdeu · perrdue · perude · pperdue · predue

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pendre" and "perdue" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pendre" is a verb and "perdue" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pendre" vs "perdue" - which ranks higher?
"perdue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,009 in our French list, against #14,110 for "pendre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "pendre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "perdue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #379,896 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pendre" and "perdue" 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 #379,896 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