percéevsPercyWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: percée is a noun, Percy is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“percée” is a noun and “Percy” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,826
“percée” frequency rank
#18,555
“Percy” frequency rank
30381
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature percée Percy
Definition Ouverture pratiquée soit pour faire un chemin, soit pour se procurer un point de vue. Commune française, située dans le département de l’Isère.

Where the eye mixes percée and Percy

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

6 ch
percée
5 ch
Percy

Visual trap between percée and Percy

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: percée is \pɛʁ.se\ while Percy is \pɛʁ.si\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30381, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

percée is recorded at frequency rank #11,826, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ.se\. Percy is at rank #18,555, tagged as aname, pronounced \pɛʁ.si\.

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 30381, this pair ranks #310,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of percée vs Percy

Shared letters: cepr. Private to "percée": é. Private to "Percy": y.

"percée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "Percy" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Percyeprcy · pecry · perccy · percyy · perrcy · peryc · ppercy · precy

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "percée" and "Percy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "percée" is a noun and "Percy" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "percée" or "Percy" show up more?
"percée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,826 in our French list, against #18,555 for "Percy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "percée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Percy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #310,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "percée" and "Percy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Percy vs perfs". 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 #310,684 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