porteravsporteurConfusable pair

Quick tell: portera is a verb, porteur is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“portera” is a verb and “porteur” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,893
“portera” frequency rank
#6,332
“porteur” frequency rank
16225
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature portera porteur
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du futur de porter. Personne dont le métier ordinaire est de porter quelque chose.

Where the eye mixes portera and porteur

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. portera (CVCCVCV) and porteur (CVCCVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
portera
7 ch
porteur

Visual trap between portera and porteur

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: portera is \pɔʁ.tə.ʁa\ while porteur is \pɔʁ.tœʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16225, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

portera is recorded at frequency rank #9,893, classified as averb, pronounced \pɔʁ.tə.ʁa\. 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 16225, this pair ranks #388,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of portera vs porteur

Shared letters: eoprt. Private to "portera": a. Private to "porteur": u.

"portera" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "porteur" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • porteraoprtera · poretra · porrtera · portear · porterra · portrea · porttera · potrera
  • porteuroprteur · poretur · porrteur · porteru · porteurr · portteur · portuer · potreur

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "portera" for "porteur" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "portera" is a verb and "porteur" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "portera" or "porteur" show up more?
"porteur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,332 in our French list, against #9,893 for "portera". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "portera" and "porteur" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "portera" 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 #388,815 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "portera" and "porteur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "portera vs posterai". 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 #388,815 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