poirevspureWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#15,720
“poire” frequency rank
#3,216
“pure” frequency rank
18936
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature poire pure
Definition Fruit à pépin, de saveur agréable, ordinairement de forme oblongue, et qui va en diminuant vers la queue. La boisson en elle-même, plutôt fortement alcoolisée qui n’est pas coupé avec une autre plus légère ou sans alcool.

Where the eye mixes poire and pure

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

5 ch
poire
4 ch
pure

Why the eye confuses poire with pure

A purely visual mix-up. poire (\pwaʁ\) and pure (\pyʁ\) 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 18936, 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\. pure is at rank #3,216, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pyʁ\.

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 18936, this pair ranks #375,853 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of poire vs pure

Shared letters: epr. Private to "poire": io. Private to "pure": u.

"poire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "pure" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poireopire · piore · poier · poirre · ppoire
  • pureppure · prue · purre · upre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "poire" and "pure" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\pwaʁ\ versus \pyʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "poire" vs "pure" - which ranks higher?
"pure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,216 in our French list, against #15,720 for "poire". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "poire" and "pure" 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 "pure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #375,853 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "poire" and "pure" 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 #375,853 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