perchéevspériméeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: perchée is a verb, périmée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“perchée” is a verb and “périmée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,245
“perchée” frequency rank
#42,551
“périmée” frequency rank
76796
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perchée périmée
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier du verbe percher. Féminin singulier de périmé.

Where the eye mixes perchée and périmée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. perchée (CVCCCVV) and périmée (CVCVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
perchée
7 ch
périmée

Visual trap between perchée and périmée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perchée is \pɛʁ.ʃe\ while périmée is \pe.ʁi.me\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76796, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

perchée is recorded at frequency rank #34,245, classified as averb, pronounced \pɛʁ.ʃe\. périmée is at rank #42,551, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pe.ʁi.me\.

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 76796, this pair ranks #30,133 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of perchée vs périmée

Shared letters: epré. Private to "perchée": ch. Private to "périmée": im.

"perchée" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCVV  ·  "périmée" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "perchée" for "périmée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "perchée" is a verb and "périmée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "perchée" vs "périmée" - which ranks higher?
"perchée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,245 in our French list, against #42,551 for "périmée". 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 "perchée" and "périmée" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "perchée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "périmée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #30,133 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "perchée" and "périmée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "périmée vs priée". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #30,133 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