peséevspisteConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#33,826
“pesée” frequency rank
#1,963
“piste” frequency rank
35789
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pesée piste
Definition Action de peser. Trace qu’a laissée un animal ou un homme sur le sol où il a marché.

Where the eye mixes pesée and piste

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pesée (CVCVV) and piste (CVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
pesée
5 ch
piste

Why the eye confuses pesée with piste

A purely visual mix-up. pesée (\pə.ze\) and piste (\pist\) 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 35789, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pesée is recorded at frequency rank #33,826, classified as anoun, pronounced \pə.ze\. piste is at rank #1,963, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pist\.

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 35789, this pair ranks #274,230 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pesée vs piste

Shared letters: eps. Private to "pesée": é. Private to "piste": it.

"pesée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "piste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piste ← ipste · piset · pisste · pistte · pitse · ppiste · psite

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pesée" for "piste" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pə.ze\ versus \pist\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "pesée" or "piste"?
"piste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,963 in our French list, against #33,826 for "pesée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pesée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #274,230 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pesée" and "piste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peep vs pesée". 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 #274,230 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