Which to use
“pons” is a noun and “près” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #21,727
- “pons” frequency rank
- #294
- “près” frequency rank
- 22021
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | pons | près |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pont. | À petite distance, à proximité. |
Letter map: pons vs près
Shared letters muted; letters that set pons and près apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.
Part-of-speech tell for pons / près
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pons is anoun and prèsanadverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22021, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
pons is recorded at frequency rank #21,727, classified as anoun. près is at rank #294, tagged as anadv, pronounced \pʁɛ\.
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 22021, this pair ranks #360,194 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of pons vs près
Shared letters: ps. Private to "pons": no. Private to "près": rè.
"pons" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "près" · 4 letters · shape CCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- pons ← opns · pnos · ponns · ponss · posn · ppons
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "pons" for "près" ever safe?
Frequency check: "pons" vs "près" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
Pair "pons" vs "près" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "pons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "près" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #360,194 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "pons" and "près" 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 #360,194 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.