ponsvsposonsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#21,727
“pons” frequency rank
#31,188
“posons” frequency rank
52915
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pons posons
Definition Pont. Première personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de poser.

Letter map: pons vs posons

Shared letters muted; letters that set pons and posons apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch
pons
6 ch
posons

Part-of-speech tell for pons / posons

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pons is anoun and posonsaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52915, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pons is recorded at frequency rank #21,727, classified as anoun. posons is at rank #31,188, tagged as averb, pronounced \po.zɔ̃\.

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 52915, this pair ranks #144,381 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pons vs posons

Shared letters: nops. Private to "pons": -. Private to "posons": -.

"pons" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "posons" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ponsopns · pnos · ponns · ponss · posn · ppons
  • posonsopsons · poosns · posnos · posonns · posonss · pososn · possons · pposons

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pons" for "posons" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pons" is a noun and "posons" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pons" or "posons" show up more?
"pons" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,727 in our French list, against #31,188 for "posons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "pons" and "posons". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "posons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #144,381 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pons" and "posons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pogo vs pons". 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 #144,381 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