percéevsperteTell them apart

Which to use

“percée” and “perte” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#11,826
“percée” frequency rank
#1,418
“perte” frequency rank
13244
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature percée perte
Definition Ouverture pratiquée soit pour faire un chemin, soit pour se procurer un point de vue. Privation de quelque chose de précieux, d’agréable, de commode, qu’on avait.

Where the eye mixes percée and perte

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

6 ch
percée
5 ch
perte

Look-alike desk: percée vs perte

A purely visual mix-up. percée (\pɛʁ.se\) and perte (\pɛʁt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13244, 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\. perte is at rank #1,418, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁt\.

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 13244, this pair ranks #401,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of percée vs perte

Shared letters: epr. Private to "percée": . Private to "perte": t.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perteeprte · peret · perrte · pertte · petre · pperte · prete

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "percée" and "perte" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɛʁ.se\ versus \pɛʁt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "percée" or "perte" show up more?
"perte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,418 in our French list, against #11,826 for "percée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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 "perte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #401,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "percée" and "perte" 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 #401,823 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