poirevsposteTell them apart

Which to use

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

#15,720
“poire” frequency rank
#695
“poste” frequency rank
16415
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature poire poste
Definition Fruit à pépin, de saveur agréable, ordinairement de forme oblongue, et qui va en diminuant vers la queue. Établissement de chevaux qui était autrefois placé de distance en distance, pour le service des voyageurs.

Where the eye mixes poire and poste

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
poire
5 ch
poste

Look-alike desk: poire vs poste

A purely visual mix-up. poire (\pwaʁ\) and poste (\pɔst\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16415, 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\. poste is at rank #695, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔst\.

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 16415, this pair ranks #387,951 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of poire vs poste

Shared letters: eop. Private to "poire": ir. Private to "poste": st.

"poire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "poste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poireopire · piore · poier · poirre · ppoire
  • posteopste · poset · posste · postte · potse · pposte · psote

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "poire" and "poste" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pwaʁ\ versus \pɔst\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "poire" vs "poste" - which ranks higher?
"poste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #695 in our French list, against #15,720 for "poire". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "poire" and "poste" 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 "poste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #387,951 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "poire" and "poste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "poire vs priée". 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 #387,951 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