percevspéritTell them apart

Quick tell: perce is a noun, périt is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#18,016
“perce” frequency rank
#40,446
“périt” frequency rank
58462
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perce périt
Definition Outil pour percer. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de périr.

Where the eye mixes perce and périt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
perce
5 ch
périt

Look-alike desk: perce vs périt

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perce is \pɛʁs\ while périt is \pe.ʁi\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58462, 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\. périt is at rank #40,446, tagged as averb, pronounced \pe.ʁi\.

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 58462, this pair ranks #108,942 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of perce vs périt

Shared letters: pr. Private to "perce": ce. Private to "périt": ité.

"perce" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "périt" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "perce" and "périt" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "perce" is a noun and "périt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "perce" or "périt" show up more?
"perce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,016 in our French list, against #40,446 for "périt". 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 "perce" and "périt" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "perce" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "périt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #108,942 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "perce" and "périt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "périt vs purin". 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 #108,942 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