avait
\a.vɛ\
The verdict
“avait” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #87 in French word frequency and used as a verb.
- #87
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe avoir.
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 | avait |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \a.vɛ\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #87 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “avait” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for avait is 5 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \a.vɛ\. Corpus data places it at rank #87 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe avoir.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for avait, with forms such as "aavit", "avaitt", and "avati". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "avi", "avis", "aval", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is avait, spelled A-V-A-I-T.
Definition
- 1Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe avoir.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: aavit,avaitt,avati,aviat,avvait,vaait
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of avait - 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 “avait”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is A-V-A-I-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \a.vɛ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “avi” - see the side-by-side comparison. avait vs avi
- 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.