Which to use
“portées” is an adjective and “porteur” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #7,881
- “portées” frequency rank
- #6,332
- “porteur” frequency rank
- 14213
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | portées | porteur |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Féminin pluriel de porté. | Personne dont le métier ordinaire est de porter quelque chose. |
Where the eye mixes portées and porteur
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. portées and porteur follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: portées vs porteur
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: portées is \pɔʁ.te\ while porteur is \pɔʁ.tœʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14213, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
portées is recorded at frequency rank #7,881, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɔʁ.te\. porteur is at rank #6,332, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁ.tœʁ\.
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 14213, this pair ranks #397,670 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of portées vs porteur
Shared letters: eoprt. Private to "portées": sé. Private to "porteur": u.
"portées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC · "porteur" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- porteur ← oprteur · poretur · porrteur · porteru · porteurr · portteur · portuer · potreur
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "portées" and "porteur" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "portées" or "porteur" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "portées" and "porteur" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "portées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "porteur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #397,670 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "portées" and "porteur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "portées vs prêtées". 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 #397,670 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.