placevsplaneWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#178
“place” frequency rank
#12,835
“plane” frequency rank
13013
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature place plane
Definition Lieu, endroit, espace qu’occupe ou que peut occuper une personne, une chose. Platane.

Where the eye mixes place and plane

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

5 ch
place
5 ch
plane

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. place (\plas\) and plane (\plan\) 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 a single letter - c in “place” becomes n in “plane”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13013, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

place is recorded at frequency rank #178, classified as anoun, pronounced \plas\. plane is at rank #12,835, tagged as anoun, pronounced \plan\.

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 13013, this pair ranks #402,790 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of place vs plane

Shared letters: aelp. Private to "place": c. Private to "plane": n.

"place" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "plane" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • placelpace · palce · placce · plaec · plcae · pllace · pplace
  • planelpane · palne · plaen · planne · pllane · plnae · pplane

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "place" and "plane" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\plas\ versus \plan\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "place" or "plane"?
"place" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #178 in our French list, against #12,835 for "plane". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list