pincéevspinteWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#29,080
“pincée” frequency rank
#28,691
“pinte” frequency rank
57771
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pincée pinte
Definition Ce qu’on peut prendre de certaines choses, en les pinçant entre deux ou trois doigts. Ancienne unité de mesure qui servait à mesurer le vin et autres liquides, et dont la valeur différait selon les lieux. À Paris elle valait 0,93 litre.

Where the eye mixes pincée and pinte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
pincée
5 ch
pinte

Why the eye confuses pincée with pinte

A purely visual mix-up. pincée (\pɛ̃.se\) and pinte (\pɛ̃t\) 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 57771, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pincée is recorded at frequency rank #29,080, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃.se\. pinte is at rank #28,691, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃t\.

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 57771, this pair ranks #113,073 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pincée vs pinte

Shared letters: einp. Private to "pincée": . Private to "pinte": t.

"pincée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "pinte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pinteipnte · pinet · pinnte · pintte · pitne · pnite · ppinte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pincée" and "pinte" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɛ̃.se\ versus \pɛ̃t\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "pincée" or "pinte" show up more?
"pinte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,691 in our French list, against #29,080 for "pincée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pincée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pinte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #113,073 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pincée" and "pinte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pinte vs pontet". 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 #113,073 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