beau
[bo]
The verdict
“beau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #33,995) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #33,995
- frequency rank, German
- 5,818
- “B” headwords
- 3
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - schön, gut, angenehm
Corpus desk
Index DE-beau · beau · German
beau · rank #33,995 · 3 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #33,995
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 3 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,818
- PHOTO-FINISH beanstanden
Nearest frequency peer: beanstanden (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “beau”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Basil
Basil
66,009 corpus weight
- Beanspruchu…
Beanspruchung
66,008 corpus weight
- beanstanden
beanstanden
66,007 corpus weight
- beau
beau
66,006 corpus weight
- bedauerlich…
bedauerlicherweise
66,005 corpus weight
- bedrohliche
bedrohliche
66,004 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “beau” sits against the nearest ranked German headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | beau |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | [bo] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #33,995 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “beau” sits in German frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for beau is neighbouring look-alikes ("bu", "bei", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced [bo]. Frequency #33,995 among 5,818 “B” headwords. Gloss: "schön, gut, angenehm".
Our generated misspelling index lists 3 likely wrong-spelling variants for beau, with forms such as "bbeau", "beua", and "ebau". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "bu", "bei", "ber", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is beau, spelled B-E-A-U.
Definition
- 1schön, gut, angenehm
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how beau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Il fait beau, aujourd'hui
Ce joueur de cornemuse est un bel homme.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- bbeau
- beua
- ebau
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of beau - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 3, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "beau"?
What does "beau" mean?
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "beau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
What to do next
You've looked up "beau". Here's where to go from here.
- "beau" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "bu". View pair
- 3 edit-distance misspelling variants are generated for spell-check research on this headword. See variants
- Usage frequency rank #33,995 among German headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more German words in the "B" letter cohort. B–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.