portéesvsposéesWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#7,881
“portées” frequency rank
#9,894
“posées” frequency rank
17775
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature portées posées
Definition Féminin pluriel de porté. Pluriel de posée.

Where the eye mixes portées and posées

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. portées runs 7 letters (CVCCVVC) against posées's 6 (CVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
portées
6 ch
posées

Look-alike desk: portées vs posées

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: portées is \pɔʁ.te\ while posées is \po.ze\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17775, 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\. posées is at rank #9,894, tagged as anoun, pronounced \po.ze\.

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 17775, this pair ranks #381,547 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of portées vs posées

Shared letters: eopsé. Private to "portées": rt. Private to "posées": -.

"portées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "posées" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "portées" for "posées" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "portées" is an adjective and "posées" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "portées" or "posées" show up more?
"portées" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,881 in our French list, against #9,894 for "posées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "portées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "posées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #381,547 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "portées" and "posées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "posées vs poseur". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #381,547 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