arête
\a.ʁɛt\
The verdict
“arête” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #17,875 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #17,875
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Os long, mince et pointu qui se trouve dans la chair de certains poissons.
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 | arête |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \a.ʁɛt\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #17,875 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “arête” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for arête is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \a.ʁɛt\. Corpus data places it at rank #17,875 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for arête, with forms such as "arete", "arrête", and "artêe". 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, "Art", "arts", "armé", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is arête, spelled A-R-Ê-T-E.
Definition
- 1Os long, mince et pointu qui se trouve dans la chair de certains poissons.
- 2Squelette entier du poisson.
- 3Barbes qui accompagnent l’épi de certaines graminées, telles que l’orge, le seigle, etc., et en général tout filet sec, grêle et plus ou moins raide qui ressemble aux barbes des graminées. Fil raide attaché au sommet ou sur le dos d’un organe d’une plante.
- 4Angle saillant formé par la rencontre et la jonction de deux surfaces d’une pierre, d’une pièce de bois ou de toute autre matière.
- 5Ligne formée par la réunion de deux surfaces inclinées l’une sur l’autre.
- 6Ligne courbe ou brisée qui sépare les deux versants d’une chaîne de montagnes.
- 7Arc d’un graphe non orienté.
- 8Dans un arbre binaire, représentation d’un lien, sous forme de droite, entre deux sommets.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: arete,arrête,artêe,arêet,arêtte,aêrte,raête
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of arête - 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.
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
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Using “arête”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is A-R-Ê-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \a.ʁɛt\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Art” - see the side-by-side comparison. arête vs Art
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
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.