Which to use
“père” and “pole” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #303
- “père” frequency rank
- #12,447
- “pole” frequency rank
- 12750
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | père | pole |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Mâle ayant fécondé un ovule qui a donné naissance à un enfant ; géniteur. | Première place au départ d’une course de véhicules motorisés. |
Where the eye mixes père and pole
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. père and pole follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: père vs pole
A purely visual mix-up. père (\pɛʁ\) and pole (\pɔl\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12750, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
père is recorded at frequency rank #303, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ\. pole is at rank #12,447, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔl\.
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 12750, this pair ranks #403,913 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of père vs pole
Shared letters: ep. Private to "père": rè. Private to "pole": lo.
"père" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "pole" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- pole ← ople · ploe · poel · polle · ppole
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "père" for "pole" ever safe?
Which is more common, "père" or "pole"?
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 "père" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "pole" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #403,913 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "père" and "pole" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peler vs pole". 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 #403,913 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.