persevsporteWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“perse” and “porte” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#12,017
“perse” frequency rank
#284
“porte” frequency rank
12301
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature perse porte
Definition Langue parlée dans la Perse antique. Ouverture battante dans un mur qui permet d’entrer ou sortir d’un endroit.

Where the eye mixes perse and porte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
perse
5 ch
porte

Why the eye confuses perse with porte

A purely visual mix-up. perse (\pɛʁs\) and porte (\pɔʁt\) 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 12301, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

perse is recorded at frequency rank #12,017, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁs\. porte is at rank #284, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁt\.

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 12301, this pair ranks #405,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of perse vs porte

Shared letters: epr. Private to "perse": s. Private to "porte": ot.

"perse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "porte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • perseeprse · perrse · persse · pperse · prese
  • porteoprte · poret · porrte · portte · potre · pporte · prote

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "perse" and "porte" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɛʁs\ versus \pɔʁt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "perse" vs "porte" - which ranks higher?
"porte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #284 in our French list, against #12,017 for "perse". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "perse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "porte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #405,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "perse" and "porte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "perse vs peso". 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 #405,815 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