ponvsponsWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#43,075
“pon” frequency rank
#21,727
“pons” frequency rank
64802
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pon pons
Definition Pont. Pont.

Letter map: pon vs pons

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

3 ch
pon
4 ch
pons

Pair insight - pon / pons

pon and pons are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “pon” sits inside “pons”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64802, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pon is recorded at frequency rank #43,075, classified as anoun. pons is at rank #21,727, tagged as anoun.

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 64802, this pair ranks #75,254 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pon vs pons

Shared letters: nop. Private to "pon": -. Private to "pons": s.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pons ← opns · pnos · ponns · ponss · posn · ppons

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pon" and "pons" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “pon” sits inside “pons”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "pon" vs "pons" - which ranks higher?
"pons" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,727 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 "pons". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #75,254 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pon" and "pons" 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 #75,254 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