percéevspermetTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#11,826
“percée” frequency rank
#456
“permet” frequency rank
12282
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature percée permet
Definition Ouverture pratiquée soit pour faire un chemin, soit pour se procurer un point de vue. Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de permettre.

Where the eye mixes percée and permet

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

6 ch
percée
6 ch
permet

Look-alike desk: percée vs permet

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: percée is \pɛʁ.se\ while permet is \pɛʁ.mɛ\. 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 12282, 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\. permet is at rank #456, tagged as averb, pronounced \pɛʁ.mɛ\.

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 12282, this pair ranks #405,894 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of percée vs permet

Shared letters: epr. Private to "percée": . Private to "permet": mt.

"percée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "permet" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • permeteprmet · pemret · peremt · permett · permmet · permte · perrmet · ppermet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "percée" for "permet" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "percée" is a noun and "permet" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "percée" vs "permet" - which ranks higher?
"permet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #456 in our French list, against #11,826 for "percée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "percée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "permet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #405,894 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "percée" and "permet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "percée vs priée". 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 #405,894 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