portéevsportéesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: portée is a noun, portées is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“portée” is a noun and “portées” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,010
“portée” frequency rank
#7,881
“portées” frequency rank
9891
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature portée portées
Definition Totalité des petits que les femelles des vivipares portent et mettent bas en une fois. Féminin pluriel de porté.

Same sound, different letters: portée vs portées

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. portée runs 6 letters (CVCCVV) against portées's 7 (CVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
portée
7 ch
portées

Homophone desk: portée vs portées

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: portée and portées carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pɔ.ʁte\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “portée” sits inside “portées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9891, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

portée is recorded at frequency rank #2,010, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔ.ʁte\. portées is at rank #7,881, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɔʁ.te\.

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 9891, this pair ranks #415,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of portée vs portées

Shared letters: eoprté. Private to "portée": -. Private to "portées": s.

"portée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "portées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "portée" and "portées" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "portée" is a noun and "portées" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "portée" or "portées"?
"portée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,010 in our French list, against #7,881 for "portées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "portée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "portées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #415,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "portée" and "portées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "portées vs prêtées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #415,025 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