posaisvsposéesConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#26,477
“posais” frequency rank
#9,894
“posées” frequency rank
36371
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature posais posées
Definition Première personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de poser. Pluriel de posée.

Where the eye mixes posais and posées

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. posais and posées follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
posais
6 ch
posées

Visual trap between posais and posées

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: posais is \po.zɛ\ while posées is \po.ze\. 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 36371, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

posais is recorded at frequency rank #26,477, classified as averb, pronounced \po.zɛ\. 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 36371, this pair ranks #270,092 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of posais vs posées

Shared letters: ops. Private to "posais": ai. Private to "posées": eé.

"posais" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "posées" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • posais ← opsais · poasis · posaiss · posasi · posias · possais · pposais · psoais

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "posais" and "posées" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "posais" is a verb and "posées" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "posais" vs "posées" - which ranks higher?
"posées" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,894 in our French list, against #26,477 for "posais". 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 "posais" 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 #270,092 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "posais" and "posées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Polaris vs posais". 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 #270,092 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