portevspurgeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#284
“porte” frequency rank
#14,543
“purge” frequency rank
14827
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature porte purge
Definition Ouverture battante dans un mur qui permet d’entrer ou sortir d’un endroit. Action de se purger ; purgatif.

Where the eye mixes porte and purge

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
porte
5 ch
purge

Visual trap between porte and purge

A purely visual mix-up. porte (\pɔʁt\) and purge (\pyʁʒ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14827, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

porte is recorded at frequency rank #284, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁt\. purge is at rank #14,543, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pyʁʒ\.

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 14827, this pair ranks #395,046 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of porte vs purge

Shared letters: epr. Private to "porte": ot. Private to "purge": gu.

"porte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "purge" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • porteoprte · poret · porrte · portte · potre · pporte · prote
  • purgeppurge · pruge · pugre · pureg · purgge · purrge · uprge

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "porte" for "purge" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pɔʁt\ versus \pyʁʒ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "porte" or "purge"?
"porte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #284 in our French list, against #14,543 for "purge". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "porte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "purge" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #395,046 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "porte" and "purge" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "purge vs purin". 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 #395,046 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