portéesvspostéesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#7,881
“portées” frequency rank
#29,919
“postées” frequency rank
37800
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature portées postées
Definition Féminin pluriel de porté. Féminin pluriel de posté.

Where the eye mixes portées and postées

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. portées and postées follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
portées
7 ch
postées

Why the eye confuses portées with postées

A purely visual mix-up. portées (\pɔʁ.te\) and postées (\pɔs.te\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - r in “portées” becomes s in “postées”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37800, 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\. postées is at rank #29,919, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɔs.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 37800, this pair ranks #259,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of portées vs postées

Shared letters: eopsté. Private to "portées": r. Private to "postées": -.

"portées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "postées" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "portées" and "postées" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\pɔʁ.te\ versus \pɔs.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "portées" or "postées" show up more?
"portées" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,881 in our French list, against #29,919 for "postées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "portées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "postées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #259,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "portées" and "postées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "postées vs postier". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #259,849 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