pigervspireConfusable pair

Quick tell: piger is a verb, pire is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“piger” is a verb and “pire” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,649
“piger” frequency rank
#659
“pire” frequency rank
32308
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piger pire
Definition Prendre, saisir. Comparatif de mauvais. Plus mauvais, plus défectueux, plus nuisible.

Where the eye mixes piger and pire

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

5 ch
piger
4 ch
pire

Visual trap between piger and pire

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: piger is \pi.ʒe\ while pire is \piʁ\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32308, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piger is recorded at frequency rank #31,649, classified as averb, pronounced \pi.ʒe\. pire is at rank #659, tagged as anadj, pronounced \piʁ\.

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 32308, this pair ranks #298,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of piger vs pire

Shared letters: eipr. Private to "piger": g. Private to "pire": -.

"piger" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "pire" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pigeripger · pgier · piegr · pigerr · pigger · pigre · ppiger
  • pireipre · pirre · ppire · prie

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "piger" and "pire" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "piger" is a verb and "pire" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "piger" or "pire" show up more?
"pire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #659 in our French list, against #31,649 for "piger". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "piger" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pire" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #298,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piger" and "pire" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peler vs piger". 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 #298,099 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