allô

Name: allô, French Word Data
Creator: Wiktionary
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

\a.lo\

/\a.lo\/ intj

By PlainSpell · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) · analyzed September 3, 2026

The verdict

“allô” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,439) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#19,439
frequency rank, French: 6,727
“A” headwords: 4
tracked misspellings: 20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Mot phatique employé pour établir ou rétablir la conversation téléphonique avec son interlocuteur.

Corpus desk

Index FR-allo · allô · French

allô · rank #19,439 · 4 variants · 20 confusables

FREQ-MID #19,439
LEN-MID 4 letters
VOW-2 2 vowels
CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
VAR-LOW 4 variants
BOOK-DENSE 6,727
PHOTO-FINISH allumage

Nearest frequency peer: allumage (-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.

Ahmad

80,565
albanais

80,564
allumage

80,563
allô

80,562
Amazonie

80,561
annonceurs

80,560

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

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

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

allô vs alt

50% similar

allô vs APL

0% similar

allô vs als

50% similar

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

Key facts for allô
Property	Value
Headword	allô
Language	French
Part of speech	Interjection
IPA	\a.lo\
Letters	4
Frequency rank	#19,439
Misspellings tracked	4
Confusable pairs	20
Source	Wiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « allô »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).allôse place ici:

#19,439

#1#100#1K#10K#100K

← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « allumage » (#19,438), « Amazonie » (#19,440), « albanais » (#19,437). Parmi 6,727 lemmes en « A », « allô » est au #19,439. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for allô is neighbouring look-alikes ("alt", "APL", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection pronounced \a.lo\. Frequency #19,439 among 6,727 “A” headwords. 4 recorded senses keep meaning in play.

Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for allô, with forms such as "allo", "alô", and "alôl". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "alt", "APL", "als", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is allô, spelled A-L-L-Ô.

Definition

1
Mot phatique employé pour établir ou rétablir la conversation téléphonique avec son interlocuteur.
2
Pour être sûr que la personne à qui on s’adresse écoute.
3
Pour signifier à l’interlocuteur que celui-ci ou qu’un tiers n’a pas l’esprit présent ou qu’il ne comprend pas une chose évidente.
4
ou Salut, aussi utilisé dans les conversations non téléphoniques pour donner ses salutations.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

Allô, oui ? Qui est à l’appareil ?
Allô, tu te sens bien, ça va ?

This word in other languages

hello(English)diga(Español)hallo(Deutsch)alô(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

allo
alô
alôl
lalô

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of allô - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.

Edit distance from "allô"

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 "allô"?

"allô" is spelled A-L-L-Ô. The IPA pronunciation is \a.lo\.

What does "allô" mean?

As an interjection, "allô" means: Mot phatique employé pour établir ou rétablir la conversation téléphonique avec son interlocuteur.

What words are commonly confused with "allô"?

"allô" is commonly confused with "alt", "APL", "als". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.

How do you pronounce "allô"?

The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "allô" is \a.lo\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.

What language does "allô" come from?

"allô" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.

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 French words by spelling shape

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

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

asso#19,446 bali#19,452 Bert#19,455 Bonn#19,458