ponvspondConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#43,075
“pon” frequency rank
#23,316
“pond” frequency rank
66391
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pon pond
Definition Pont. Troisième personne de l’indicatif présent du verbe pondre.

Letter map: pon vs pond

Shared letters muted; letters that set pon and pond apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. pon runs 3 letters (CVC) against pond's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
pon
4 ch
pond

Role in the sentence - pon and pond

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pon is anoun and pondaverb. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “pon” sits inside “pond”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66391, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pon is recorded at frequency rank #43,075, classified as anoun. pond is at rank #23,316, tagged as averb, pronounced \pɔ̃\.

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 66391, this pair ranks #68,028 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pon vs pond

Shared letters: nop. Private to "pon": -. Private to "pond": d.

"pon" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "pond" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pond ← opnd · pnod · podn · pondd · ponnd · ppond

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pon" and "pond" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pon" is a noun and "pond" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pon" or "pond" show up more?
"pond" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,316 in our French list, against #43,075 for "pon". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "pon" and "pond". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pond" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #68,028 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pon" and "pond" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pio vs pon". 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 #68,028 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