puitvspurinWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#41,476
“puit” frequency rank
#48,127
“purin” frequency rank
89603
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature puit purin
Definition Variante orthographique de puits. Partie liquide du fumier.

Where the eye mixes puit and purin

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. puit runs 4 letters (CVVC) against purin's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
puit
5 ch
purin

Why the eye confuses puit with purin

A purely visual mix-up. puit (\pɥi\) and purin (\py.ʁɛ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 89603, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

puit is recorded at frequency rank #41,476, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɥi\. purin is at rank #48,127, tagged as anoun, pronounced \py.ʁɛ̃\.

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 89603, this pair ranks #5,609 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of puit vs purin

Shared letters: ipu. Private to "puit": t. Private to "purin": nr.

"puit" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "purin" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • puit ← piut · ppuit · puitt · puti · upit
  • purin ← ppurin · pruin · puirn · purinn · purni · purrin · uprin

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "puit" for "purin" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pɥi\ versus \py.ʁɛ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "puit" vs "purin" - which ranks higher?
"puit" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #41,476 in our French list, against #48,127 for "purin". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "puit" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "purin" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,609 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "puit" and "purin" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "palin vs purin". 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 #5,609 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