popsvspuisTell them apart

Quick tell: pops is a noun, puis is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pops” is a noun and “puis” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,004
“pops” frequency rank
#172
“puis” frequency rank
37176
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pops puis
Definition Pluriel de pop. (adverbe de temps) Permet l’enchaînement chronologique d’évènements.

Where the eye mixes pops and puis

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
pops
4 ch
puis

Visual trap between pops and puis

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pops is \pɔp\ while puis is \pɥi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37176, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pops is recorded at frequency rank #37,004, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔp\. puis is at rank #172, tagged as anadv, pronounced \pɥi\.

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 37176, this pair ranks #264,335 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pops vs puis

Shared letters: ps. Private to "pops": o. Private to "puis": iu.

"pops" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "puis" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • popsopps · popps · popss · posp · ppops · ppos
  • puispius · ppuis · puiss · pusi · upis

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pops" and "puis" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pops" is a noun and "puis" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pops" or "puis"?
"puis" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #172 in our French list, against #37,004 for "pops". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pops" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "puis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #264,335 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pops" and "puis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pogo vs pops". 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 #264,335 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