pintesvspisteTell them apart

Which to use

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

#44,096
“pintes” frequency rank
#1,963
“piste” frequency rank
46059
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pintes piste
Definition Pluriel de pinte. Trace qu’a laissée un animal ou un homme sur le sol où il a marché.

Where the eye mixes pintes and piste

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

6 ch
pintes
5 ch
piste

Why the eye confuses pintes with piste

A purely visual mix-up. pintes (\pɛ̃t\) and piste (\pist\) 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 46059, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pintes is recorded at frequency rank #44,096, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃t\. piste is at rank #1,963, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pist\.

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 46059, this pair ranks #197,936 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pintes vs piste

Shared letters: eipst. Private to "pintes": n. Private to "piste": -.

"pintes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "piste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pintesipntes · pinets · pinntes · pintess · pintse · pinttes · pitnes · pnites
  • pisteipste · piset · pisste · pistte · pitse · ppiste · psite

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pintes" and "piste" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɛ̃t\ versus \pist\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "pintes" vs "piste" - which ranks higher?
"piste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,963 in our French list, against #44,096 for "pintes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "pintes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #197,936 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pintes" and "piste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pintes 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 #197,936 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