priéevsproieTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#49,295
“priée” frequency rank
#6,874
“proie” frequency rank
56169
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature priée proie
Definition Participe passé féminin singulier de prier. Animal vivant qu’un animal carnassier ravit pour le manger.

Where the eye mixes priée and proie

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
priée
5 ch
proie

Visual trap between priée and proie

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: priée is \pʁi.je\ while proie is \pʁwa\. 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 56169, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

priée is recorded at frequency rank #49,295, classified as averb, pronounced \pʁi.je\. proie is at rank #6,874, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pʁwa\.

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 56169, this pair ranks #122,786 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of priée vs proie

Shared letters: eipr. Private to "priée": é. Private to "proie": o.

"priée" · 5 letters · shape CCVVV  ·  "proie" · 5 letters · shape CCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • proieporie · pproie · prioe · proei · prroie · rpoie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "priée" and "proie" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "priée" is a verb and "proie" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "priée" or "proie" show up more?
"proie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,874 in our French list, against #49,295 for "priée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "priée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "proie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #122,786 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "priée" and "proie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prep vs priée". 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 #122,786 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