purvspurinWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pur is a adjective, purin is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pur” is an adjective and “purin” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,034
“pur” frequency rank
#48,127
“purin” frequency rank
51161
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pur purin
Definition Qui est sans mélange, en parlant d’un produit, d’une émotion. Partie liquide du fumier.

Where the eye mixes pur and purin

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

3 ch
pur
5 ch
purin

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pur is \pyʁ\ while purin is \py.ʁɛ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “pur” sits inside “purin”, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51161, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pur is recorded at frequency rank #3,034, classified as anadj, pronounced \pyʁ\. 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 51161, this pair ranks #157,108 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pur vs purin

Shared letters: pru. Private to "pur": -. Private to "purin": in.

"pur" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "purin" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • purinppurin · pruin · puirn · purinn · purni · purrin · uprin

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pur" and "purin" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pur" is an adjective and "purin" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pur" or "purin"?
"pur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,034 in our French list, against #48,127 for "purin". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "pur" and "purin". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pur" 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 #157,108 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pur" 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list