au

\o\

/\o\/ article

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“au” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #24) as an article. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#24
frequency rank, French
6,727
“A” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Contraction de la préposition à et de l'article défini le.

Corpus desk

Index FR-au · au · French

au · rank #24 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-CORE #24
  • LEN-SHORT 2 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,727
  • PHOTO-FINISH C

Nearest frequency peer: C (-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.

Frequency neighbourhood for “au”

Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)

corpus weight

What this shows Bars show where “au” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.

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).

au vs av
50% similar
au vs az
50% similar
au vs aw
50% similar

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

Key facts for au
PropertyValue
Headwordau
LanguageFrench
Part of speechArticle
IPA\o\
Letters2
Frequency rank#24
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Où “au” se place dans la fréquence du français

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.ause place ici:

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

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « C » (#23), « ce » (#25), « qui » (#22). Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for au is neighbouring look-alikes ("av", "az", …), not just typos; it is anarticle pronounced \o\. Frequency #24 among 6,727 “A” headwords. Gloss: "Contraction de la préposition à et de l'article défini le.".

au has no tracked misspelling variants, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "av", "az", "aw", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is au, spelled A-U.

Definition

  1. 1
    Contraction de la préposition à et de l'article défini le.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Je vais au marché.
  2. Ce train s’arrête au Mans.

This word in other languages

al(Español)zu(Deutsch)ao(Português)

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 "au"?
"au" is spelled A-U. The IPA pronunciation is \o\.
What does "au" mean?
As an article, "au" means: Contraction de la préposition à et de l'article défini le.
What words are commonly confused with "au"?
"au" is commonly confused with "av", "az", "aw". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "au"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "au" is \o\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "au" come from?
"au" 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.

What to do next

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PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list