pourrievspourritWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pourrie is a adjective, pourrit is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pourrie” is an adjective and “pourrit” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#12,220
“pourrie” frequency rank
#26,478
“pourrit” frequency rank
38698
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pourrie pourrit
Definition Féminin singulier de pourri. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de pourrir.

Same sound, different letters: pourrie vs pourrit

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
pourrie
7 ch
pourrit

Homophone desk: pourrie vs pourrit

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: pourrie and pourrit carry the same recorded pronunciation, \pu.ʁi\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by a single letter - e in “pourrie” becomes t in “pourrit”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38698, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pourrie is recorded at frequency rank #12,220, classified as anadj, pronounced \pu.ʁi\. pourrit is at rank #26,478, tagged as averb, pronounced \pu.ʁi\.

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 38698, this pair ranks #253,429 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pourrie vs pourrit

Shared letters: iopru. Private to "pourrie": e. Private to "pourrit": t.

"pourrie" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV  ·  "pourrit" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pourrieopurrie · porurie · pourie · pourire · pourrei · ppourrie · puorrie
  • pourritopurrit · porurit · pourirt · pourit · pourritt · pourrti · ppourrit · puorrit

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pourrie" and "pourrit" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pourrie" is an adjective and "pourrit" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "pourrie" or "pourrit" show up more?
"pourrie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,220 in our French list, against #26,478 for "pourrit". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pourrie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pourrit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #253,429 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pourrie" and "pourrit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pourries vs pourrit". 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 #253,429 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