perçuvspèreWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#7,609
“perçu” frequency rank
#303
“père” frequency rank
7912
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perçu père
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe percevoir. Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur.

Where the spellings diverge

Shared letters are muted; the letters that actually set perçu and père apart are highlighted. They share 2 letters in sequence, which is exactly why the eye skips the difference.

5 ch
perçu
4 ch
père

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perçu is \pɛʁ.sy\ while père is \pɛʁ\. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7912, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

perçu is recorded at frequency rank #7,609, classified as averb, pronounced \pɛʁ.sy\. père is at rank #303, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ\.

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 7912, this pair ranks #421,739 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of perçu vs père

Shared letters: epr. Private to "perçu": . Private to "père": è.

"perçu" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Frequency comparison

perçu#7,609
père#303

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "perçu" and "père" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "perçu" is a verb and "père" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "perçu" or "père"?
"père" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #303 in our French list, against #7,609 for "perçu". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Remembering perçu vs père

The fastest way to pick the right one every time.

  • Check the role first: if you need a verb, it's “perçu”; for a noun, it's “père”.
  • See each word in full, definition, IPA, etymology and its other confusables. Full “perçu” entry
  • Browse more pairs most likely to be confused. Most confusable

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list