pontevsposteTell them apart

Which to use

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

#18,831
“ponte” frequency rank
#695
“poste” frequency rank
19526
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ponte poste
Definition Action de pondre, pondaison. Établissement de chevaux qui était autrefois placé de distance en distance, pour le service des voyageurs.

Where the eye mixes ponte and poste

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
ponte
5 ch
poste

Why the eye confuses ponte with poste

A purely visual mix-up. ponte (\pɔ̃t\) and poste (\pɔst\) 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 a single letter - n in “ponte” becomes s in “poste”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19526, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ponte is recorded at frequency rank #18,831, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔ̃t\. poste is at rank #695, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔst\.

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 19526, this pair ranks #372,828 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ponte vs poste

Shared letters: eopt. Private to "ponte": n. Private to "poste": s.

"ponte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "poste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ponteopnte · pnote · ponet · ponnte · pontte · potne · pponte
  • posteopste · poset · posste · postte · potse · pposte · psote

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ponte" and "poste" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\pɔ̃t\ versus \pɔst\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "ponte" or "poste"?
"poste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #695 in our French list, against #18,831 for "ponte". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "ponte" and "poste" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ponte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "poste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #372,828 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ponte" and "poste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ponte vs pontet". 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 #372,828 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