percevspercéesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: perce is a noun, percées is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#18,016
“perce” frequency rank
#27,905
“percées” frequency rank
45921
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perce percées
Definition Outil pour percer. Féminin pluriel de percé.

Where the eye mixes perce and percées

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

5 ch
perce
7 ch
percées

Visual trap between perce and percées

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perce is \pɛʁs\ while percées is \pɛʁ.se\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45921, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

perce is recorded at frequency rank #18,016, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁs\. percées is at rank #27,905, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁ.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 45921, this pair ranks #199,037 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of perce vs percées

Shared letters: cepr. Private to "perce": -. Private to "percées": .

"perce" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "percées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perceeprce · pecre · percce · perec · perrce · pperce · prece

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "perce" and "percées" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "perce" is a noun and "percées" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "perce" or "percées" show up more?
"perce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,016 in our French list, against #27,905 for "percées". 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 "perce" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "percées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #199,037 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "perce" and "percées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "percées vs périmés". 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 #199,037 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