percéevsperdeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#11,826
“percée” frequency rank
#13,654
“perde” frequency rank
25480
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature percée perde
Definition Ouverture pratiquée soit pour faire un chemin, soit pour se procurer un point de vue. Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de perdre.

Where the eye mixes percée and perde

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

6 ch
percée
5 ch
perde

Why the eye confuses percée with perde

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: percée is \pɛʁ.se\ while perde is \pɛʁd\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25480, 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\. perde is at rank #13,654, tagged as averb, pronounced \pɛʁd\.

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 25480, this pair ranks #340,618 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of percée vs perde

Shared letters: epr. Private to "percée": . Private to "perde": d.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perdeeprde · pedre · perdde · pered · pperde · prede

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "percée" and "perde" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "percée" is a noun and "perde" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "percée" vs "perde" - which ranks higher?
"percée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,826 in our French list, against #13,654 for "perde". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "percée" and "perde" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "percée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "perde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #340,618 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "percée" and "perde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "perde vs prude". 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 #340,618 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