Which to use
“porter” is a verb and “portière” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #883
- “porter” frequency rank
- #20,241
- “portière” frequency rank
- 21124
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | porter | portière |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Soutenir quelque chose ou quelqu’un. | Femme dont la profession est de garder une porte d’entrée. |
Where the eye mixes porter and portière
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. porter runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against portière's 8 (CVCCVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: porter vs portière
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: porter is \pɔʁ.te\ while portière is \pɔʁ.tjɛʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21124, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
porter is recorded at frequency rank #883, classified as averb, pronounced \pɔʁ.te\. portière is at rank #20,241, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁ.tjɛʁ\.
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 21124, this pair ranks #364,730 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of porter vs portière
Shared letters: eoprt. Private to "porter": -. Private to "portière": iè.
"porter" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "portière" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- porter ← oprter · poretr · porrter · porterr · portre · portter · potrer · pporter
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "porter" and "portière" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "porter" vs "portière" - which ranks higher?
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 "porter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "portière" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #364,730 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "porter" and "portière" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "portière vs potiers". 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 #364,730 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.