pintevspointéeTell them apart

Quick tell: pinte is a noun, pointée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pinte” is a noun and “pointée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#28,691
“pinte” frequency rank
#32,528
“pointée” frequency rank
61219
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pinte pointée
Definition 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. Féminin singulier de pointé.

Where the eye mixes pinte and pointée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. pinte runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against pointée's 7 (CVVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
pinte
7 ch
pointée

Visual trap between pinte and pointée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pinte is \pɛ̃t\ while pointée is \pwɛ̃.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61219, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pinte is recorded at frequency rank #28,691, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃t\. pointée is at rank #32,528, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pwɛ̃.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 61219, this pair ranks #93,449 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pinte vs pointée

Shared letters: einpt. Private to "pinte": -. Private to "pointée": oé.

"pinte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pointée" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pinte ← ipnte · pinet · pinnte · pintte · pitne · pnite · ppinte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pinte" and "pointée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pinte" is a noun and "pointée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pinte" vs "pointée" - which ranks higher?
"pinte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,691 in our French list, against #32,528 for "pointée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pinte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pointée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #93,449 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pinte" and "pointée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pointée 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 #93,449 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