affaire

noun

"affaire" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“affaire” is uncommon English (frequency #73,844 among 3,931 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#73,844
frequency rank, English
3,931
“A” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Obsolete spelling of affair.

Corpus desk

Index EN-affaire · affaire · English

affaire · rank #73,844 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #73,844
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 3,931
  • PHOTO-FINISH afrobeat

Nearest frequency peer: afrobeat (+1 rank slots)

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

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.

Long-tail ranks near “affaire”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “affaire” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for affaire
PropertyValue
Headwordaffaire
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters7
Frequency rank#73,844
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “affaire” in English

Word frequency stretches from the small set of words we reach for constantly (left) out to the long tail barely used once in a while (right).affairefalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Scale is logarithmic (each tick is 10× rarer). Rare peers in the same band: “afrobeat” (#73,845), “aglow” (#73,847), “acceptably” (#73,840). Among 3,931 “A” headwords, “affaire” is #73,844. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

affaire is uncommon English at frequency #73,844 among 3,931 “A” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Obsolete spelling of affair.".

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for affaire, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is affaire, spelled A-F-F-A-I-R-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Obsolete spelling of affair.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how affaire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. M. Secretarie hath this accustomed maner, though his head be neuer so full of most weightie affaires of the Realme, yet, at diner time he doth seeme to lay them alwaies aside

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 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "affaire"?
"affaire" is spelled A-F-F-A-I-R-E.
What does "affaire" mean?
As a noun, "affaire" means: Obsolete spelling of affair.
What language does "affaire" come from?
"affaire" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "affaire", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list