Which to use
“près” is an adverb and “prose” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #294
- “près” frequency rank
- #12,225
- “prose” frequency rank
- 12519
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | près | prose |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | À petite distance, à proximité. | Langage, manière d’écrire qui n’est pas assujettie à une certaine mesure, à un certain nombre de pieds et de syllabes, etc. |
Where the eye mixes près and prose
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: près vs prose
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: près is \pʁɛ\ while prose is \pʁoz\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adverb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12519, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
près is recorded at frequency rank #294, classified as anadv, pronounced \pʁɛ\. prose is at rank #12,225, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pʁoz\.
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 12519, this pair ranks #404,931 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of près vs prose
Shared letters: prs. Private to "près": è. Private to "prose": eo.
"près" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "prose" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- prose ← porse · pprose · proes · prosse · prrose · prsoe · rpose
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "près" and "prose" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "près" or "prose" show up more?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "près" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "prose" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #404,931 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "près" and "prose" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "priée vs prose". 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 #404,931 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.