ae

noun

The verdict

“ae” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #20,911) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#20,911
frequency rank, French
6,727
“A” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Graine.

Corpus desk

Index FR-ae · ae · French

ae · rank #20,911 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #20,911
  • LEN-SHORT 2 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,727
  • PHOTO-FINISH adéquation

Nearest frequency peer: adéquation (-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.

Voisins de fréquence du confusable « ae »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « ae » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

ae vs au
50% similar
ae vs As
0% similar
ae vs an
50% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for ae
PropertyValue
Headwordae
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
Letters2
Frequency rank#20,911
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « ae »

Cette échelle va du noyau du français courant (gauche) jusqu'à la traîne des formes rares (droite).aese place ici:

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

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « adéquation » (#20,910), « affectant » (#20,912), « ADSL » (#20,909). Parmi 6,727 lemmes en « A », « ae » est au #20,911. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for ae is neighbouring look-alikes ("au", "As", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #20,911 among 6,727 “A” headwords. Gloss: "Graine.".

ae doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "au", "As", "an", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is ae, spelled A-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Graine.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. Kʋamɩn kulo ae tolo.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "ae"?
"ae" is spelled A-E.
What does "ae" mean?
As a noun, "ae" means: Graine.
What words are commonly confused with "ae"?
"ae" is commonly confused with "au", "As", "an". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "ae" come from?
"ae" is a French 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list