arf
\aʁf\
The verdict
“arf” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #24,862) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #24,862
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Hé !
Corpus desk
Index FR-arf · arf · French
arf · rank #24,862 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #24,862
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH Arcachon
Nearest frequency peer: Arcachon (-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 « arf »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- annonça
annonça
75,143 corpus weight
- anthropolog…
anthropologue
75,142 corpus weight
- Arcachon
Arcachon
75,140 corpus weight
- arf
arf
75,139 corpus weight
- around
around
75,137 corpus weight
- asperger
asperger
75,136 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « arf » 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).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | arf |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | \aʁf\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #24,862 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « arf »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for arf is neighbouring look-alikes ("au", "As", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection pronounced \aʁf\. Frequency #24,862 among 6,727 “A” headwords. 4 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for arf, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "au", "As", "at", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is arf, spelled A-R-F.
Definition
- 1Hé !
- 2Zut !
- 3Onomatopée pour exprimer le rire.
- 4Onomatopée pour exprimer un soupir désespéré, pessimiste, réprobateur ou méprisant.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how arf appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Arf, mais pourquoi…
Arf, j’avais pas vu la boîte déroulante !
This word in other languages
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "arf", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).