petsvspuisWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pets is a noun, puis is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pets” is a noun and “puis” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,078
“pets” frequency rank
#172
“puis” frequency rank
29250
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pets puis
Definition Pluriel de pet. (adverbe de temps) Permet l’enchaînement chronologique d’évènements.

Where the eye mixes pets and puis

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
pets
4 ch
puis

Look-alike desk: pets vs puis

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pets is \pɛ\ while puis is \pɥi\. 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 (noun vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29250, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pets is recorded at frequency rank #29,078, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛ\. puis is at rank #172, tagged as anadv, pronounced \pɥi\.

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 29250, this pair ranks #317,843 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pets vs puis

Shared letters: ps. Private to "pets": et. Private to "puis": iu.

"pets" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "puis" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • petsepts · pest · petss · petts · ppets · ptes
  • puispius · ppuis · puiss · pusi · upis

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pets" for "puis" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pets" is a noun and "puis" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pets" vs "puis" - which ranks higher?
"puis" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #172 in our French list, against #29,078 for "pets". 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 "pets" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "puis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #317,843 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pets" and "puis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peep vs pets". 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 #317,843 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