Which to use
“perdu” is an adjective and “père” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #634
- “perdu” frequency rank
- #303
- “père” frequency rank
- 937
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | perdu | père |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Dont on n’a plus la possession, la jouissance. | Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur. |
Where the eye mixes perdu and père
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses perdu with père
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perdu is \pɛʁ.dy\ 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 937, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
perdu is recorded at frequency rank #634, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁ.dy\. 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 937, this pair ranks #438,886 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of perdu vs père
Shared letters: epr. Private to "perdu": du. Private to "père": è.
"perdu" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- perdu ← eprdu · pedru · perddu · perrdu · perud · pperdu · predu
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "perdu" for "père" ever safe?
Which is more common, "perdu" or "père"?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "perdu" and "père" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "perdu" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "père" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #438,886 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "perdu" and "père" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "père vs prep". 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 #438,886 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.