pestovsPostTell them apart

Quick tell: pesto is a noun, Post is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pesto” is a noun and “Post” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,918
“pesto” frequency rank
#1,966
“Post” frequency rank
42884
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pesto Post
Definition Sauce italienne, proche du pistou, composée de basilic, de pignons de pin, d’huile d’olive, d’ail et de fromage râpé. Nom de famille allemand, néerlandais.

Where the eye mixes pesto and Post

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

5 ch
pesto
4 ch
Post

Why the eye confuses pesto with Post

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pesto is \pɛs.to\ while Post is \pɔst\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42884, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pesto is recorded at frequency rank #40,918, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛs.to\. Post is at rank #1,966, tagged as aname, pronounced \pɔst\.

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 42884, this pair ranks #222,154 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pesto vs Post

Shared letters: opst. Private to "pesto": e. Private to "Post": -.

"pesto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "Post" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pestoepsto · pesot · pessto · pestto · petso · ppesto · pseto
  • Postopst · posst · postt · ppost · psot

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pesto" and "Post" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pesto" is a noun and "Post" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pesto" or "Post" show up more?
"Post" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,966 in our French list, against #40,918 for "pesto". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "pesto" and "Post" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pesto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Post" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #222,154 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pesto" and "Post" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peso vs pesto". 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 #222,154 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