Which to use
“piller” and “pister” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #19,103
- “piller” frequency rank
- #41,454
- “pister” frequency rank
- 60557
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | piller | pister |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Emporter violemment les biens d’une ville, d’une maison, etc. | Suivre les traces d’un animal. |
Where the eye mixes piller and pister
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. piller and pister follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Why the eye confuses piller with pister
A purely visual mix-up. piller (\pi.je\) and pister (\pis.te\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60557, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
piller is recorded at frequency rank #19,103, classified as averb, pronounced \pi.je\. pister is at rank #41,454, tagged as averb, pronounced \pis.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 60557, this pair ranks #96,994 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of piller vs pister
Shared letters: eipr. Private to "piller": l. Private to "pister": st.
"piller" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "pister" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "piller" and "pister" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "piller" or "pister" show up more?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "piller" and "pister" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "piller" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "pister" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #96,994 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "piller" and "pister" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pister vs postier". 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 #96,994 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.