purevspuretéWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#3,216
“pure” frequency rank
#11,647
“pureté” frequency rank
14863
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pure pureté
Definition La boisson en elle-même, plutôt fortement alcoolisée qui n’est pas coupé avec une autre plus légère ou sans alcool. Qualité d’une chose qui est pure et sans mélange.

Where the eye mixes pure and pureté

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

4 ch
pure
6 ch
pureté

Visual trap between pure and pureté

A purely visual mix-up. pure (\pyʁ\) and pureté (\pyʁ.te\) 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 2 extra letter(s) - “pure” sits inside “pureté”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14863, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pure is recorded at frequency rank #3,216, classified as anoun, pronounced \pyʁ\. pureté is at rank #11,647, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pyʁ.te\.

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 14863, this pair ranks #394,892 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pure vs pureté

Shared letters: epru. Private to "pure": -. Private to "pureté": .

"pure" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "pureté" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pureppure · prue · purre · upre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pure" and "pureté" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\pyʁ\ versus \pyʁ.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "pure" or "pureté" show up more?
"pure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,216 in our French list, against #11,647 for "pureté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pureté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #394,892 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pure" and "pureté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prêtez vs pureté". 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 #394,892 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