piècesvspiétéWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#795
“pièces” frequency rank
#19,942
“piété” frequency rank
20737
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pièces piété
Definition Pluriel de pièce. Dévotion, attachement aux devoirs et aux pratiques de la religion.

Where the eye mixes pièces and piété

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

6 ch
pièces
5 ch
piété

Look-alike desk: pièces vs piété

A purely visual mix-up. pièces (\pjɛs\) and piété (\pje.te\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20737, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pièces is recorded at frequency rank #795, classified as anoun, pronounced \pjɛs\. piété is at rank #19,942, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pje.te\.

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 20737, this pair ranks #366,745 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pièces vs piété

Shared letters: ip. Private to "pièces": cesè. Private to "piété": .

"pièces" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "piété" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pièces" and "piété" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pjɛs\ versus \pje.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "pièces" or "piété"?
"pièces" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #795 in our French list, against #19,942 for "piété". 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 "pièces" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piété" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #366,745 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pièces" and "piété" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piété vs piétiné". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #366,745 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