poirevspondreTell them apart

Quick tell: poire is a noun, pondre is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“poire” is a noun and “pondre” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,720
“poire” frequency rank
#22,035
“pondre” frequency rank
37755
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature poire pondre
Definition Fruit à pépin, de saveur agréable, ordinairement de forme oblongue, et qui va en diminuant vers la queue. Faire, déposer un ou des œufs.

Where the eye mixes poire and pondre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. poire runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against pondre's 6 (CVCCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
poire
6 ch
pondre

Look-alike desk: poire vs pondre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: poire is \pwaʁ\ while pondre is \pɔ̃dʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37755, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

poire is recorded at frequency rank #15,720, classified as anoun, pronounced \pwaʁ\. pondre is at rank #22,035, tagged as averb, pronounced \pɔ̃dʁ\.

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 37755, this pair ranks #260,159 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of poire vs pondre

Shared letters: eopr. Private to "poire": i. Private to "pondre": dn.

"poire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "pondre" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poire ← opire · piore · poier · poirre · ppoire
  • pondre ← opndre · pnodre · podnre · ponddre · ponder · pondrre · ponndre · ponrde

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "poire" and "pondre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "poire" is a noun and "pondre" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "poire" vs "pondre" - which ranks higher?
"poire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,720 in our French list, against #22,035 for "pondre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "poire" and "pondre" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "poire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pondre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #260,159 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "poire" and "pondre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pondérée vs pondre". 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 #260,159 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