Which to use
“père” and “perfs” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #303
- “père” frequency rank
- #46,951
- “perfs” frequency rank
- 47254
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | père | perfs |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur. | Pluriel de perf. |
Where the eye mixes père and perfs
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses père with perfs
A purely visual mix-up. père (\pɛʁ\) and perfs (\pɛʁf\) 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 47254, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
père is recorded at frequency rank #303, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ\. perfs is at rank #46,951, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁf\.
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 47254, this pair ranks #188,364 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of père vs perfs
Shared letters: epr. Private to "père": è. Private to "perfs": fs.
"père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "perfs" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- perfs ← eprfs · pefrs · perffs · perfss · perrfs · persf · pperfs · prefs
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "père" and "perfs" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "père" vs "perfs" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "père" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "perfs" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #188,364 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "père" and "perfs" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "perfs vs pètes". 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 #188,364 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.