pressingvspressionTell them apart

Which to use

“pressing” and “pression” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#22,039
“pressing” frequency rank
#1,187
“pression” frequency rank
23226
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pressing pression
Definition Repassage à la vapeur. Force appliquée à une unité de surface, ou grandeur scalaire, exercée par un fluide sur une surface, perpendiculairement à celle-ci.

Where the eye mixes pressing and pression

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence.

8 ch
pressing
8 ch
pression

Visual trap between pressing and pression

A purely visual mix-up. pressing (\pʁɛ.siŋ\) and pression (\pʁɛ.sjɔ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23226, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pressing is recorded at frequency rank #22,039, classified as anoun, pronounced \pʁɛ.siŋ\. pression is at rank #1,187, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pʁɛ.sjɔ̃\.

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 23226, this pair ranks #353,701 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pressing vs pression

Shared letters: einprs. Private to "pressing": g. Private to "pression": o.

"pressing" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC  ·  "pression" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pressingperssing · ppressing · presing · presisng · pressign · pressingg · pressinng · pressnig
  • pressionperssion · ppression · presion · presison · pressino · pressionn · pressoin · prression

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pressing" for "pression" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pʁɛ.siŋ\ versus \pʁɛ.sjɔ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "pressing" vs "pression" - which ranks higher?
"pression" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,187 in our French list, against #22,039 for "pressing". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pressing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pression" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #353,701 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pressing" and "pression" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "precision vs pression". 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 #353,701 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