Which to use
“perfide” is an adjective and “permise” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #26,128
- “perfide” frequency rank
- #19,098
- “permise” frequency rank
- 45226
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | perfide | permise |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui est déloyal, qui manque à sa foi, à sa parole, ou à la confiance qu’on a mise en lui. | Participe passé féminin singulier de permettre. |
Where the eye mixes perfide and permise
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. perfide and permise follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: perfide vs permise
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: perfide is \pɛʁ.fid\ while permise is \pɛʁ.miz\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45226, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
perfide is recorded at frequency rank #26,128, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɛʁ.fid\. permise is at rank #19,098, tagged as averb, pronounced \pɛʁ.miz\.
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 45226, this pair ranks #204,383 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of perfide vs permise
Shared letters: eipr. Private to "perfide": df. Private to "permise": ms.
"perfide" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV · "permise" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "perfide" and "permise" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "perfide" or "permise" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "perfide" and "permise" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "perfide" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "permise" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #204,383 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "perfide" and "permise" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "permise vs persisté". 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 #204,383 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.