auf
\aʊ̯f\
The verdict
“auf” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #25,894) as a preposition. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #25,894
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sur, avec notion d'immobilité.
Corpus desk
Index FR-auf · auf · French
auf · rank #25,894 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #25,894
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH asymétrique
Nearest frequency peer: asymétrique (-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 « auf »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- assimile
assimile
74,111 corpus weight
- asymétrique
asymétrique
74,108 corpus weight
- auf
auf
74,107 corpus weight
- aurora
aurora
74,106 corpus weight
- avides
avides
74,105 corpus weight
- Aymeric
Aymeric
74,104 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « auf » 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 | auf |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Preposition |
| IPA | \aʊ̯f\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #25,894 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « auf »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for auf is neighbouring look-alikes ("av", "az", …), not just typos; it is apreposition pronounced \aʊ̯f\. Frequency #25,894 among 6,727 “A” headwords. 9 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
auf has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "av", "az", "aw", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is auf, spelled A-U-F.
Definition
- 1Sur, avec notion d'immobilité.
- 2Sur, en cas de mouvement.
- 3Sur, à, en, en parlant d’une île.
- 4À (un évènement, une activité).
- 5En, en parlant d’une langue.
- 6Par, pour.
- 7auf ... hin: Concernant, relativement à.
- 8auf ... zu: Vers, en direction de.
- 9Sur, à l'occasion de.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how auf appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Er ist auf dem Tisch.
Das Buch liegt auf dem Tisch.
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 "auf", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).