piedvspriéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pied is a noun, priée is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pied” is a noun and “priée” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#756
“pied” frequency rank
#49,295
“priée” frequency rank
50051
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pied priée
Definition Partie du corps humain située à l’extrémité des jambes. Participe passé féminin singulier de prier.

Where the eye mixes pied and priée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pied runs 4 letters (CVVC) against priée's 5 (CCVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
pied
5 ch
priée

Look-alike desk: pied vs priée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pied is \pje\ while priée is \pʁi.je\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50051, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pied is recorded at frequency rank #756, classified as anoun, pronounced \pje\. priée is at rank #49,295, tagged as averb, pronounced \pʁi.je\.

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 50051, this pair ranks #165,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pied vs priée

Shared letters: eip. Private to "pied": d. Private to "priée": .

"pied" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "priée" · 5 letters · shape CCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piediped · peid · pide · piedd · ppied

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pied" for "priée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pied" is a noun and "priée" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pied" or "priée" show up more?
"pied" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #756 in our French list, against #49,295 for "priée". 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 "pied" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "priée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #165,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pied" and "priée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prep vs priée". 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 #165,674 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