perduevsPerséeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: perdue is a adjective, Persée is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“perdue” is an adjective and “Persée” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,009
“perdue” frequency rank
#37,476
“Persée” frequency rank
41485
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perdue Persée
Definition Féminin singulier de perdu. Sauveur d’Andromède, fille de Céphée et Cassiopée.

Where the eye mixes perdue and Persée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. perdue and Persée follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
perdue
6 ch
Persée

Why the eye confuses perdue with Persée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perdue is \pɛʁ.dy\ while Persée is \pɛʁ.se\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41485, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

perdue is recorded at frequency rank #4,009, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁ.dy\. Persée is at rank #37,476, tagged as aname, pronounced \pɛʁ.se\.

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 41485, this pair ranks #232,738 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of perdue vs Persée

Shared letters: epr. Private to "perdue": du. Private to "Persée": sé.

"perdue" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "Persée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perdue ← eprdue · pedrue · perddue · perdeu · perrdue · perude · pperdue · predue

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "perdue" for "Persée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "perdue" is an adjective and "Persée" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "perdue" or "Persée"?
"perdue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,009 in our French list, against #37,476 for "Persée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "perdue" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Persée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #232,738 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "perdue" and "Persée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Persée 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 #232,738 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