B
\be\
The verdict
“B” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #666 in French word frequency and used as a character.
- #666
- frequency rank, French
- 1
- letter
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Deuxième lettre et première consonne de l’alphabet latin (en majuscule).
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 | B |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Character |
| IPA | \be\ |
| Letters | 1 |
| Frequency rank | #666 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “B” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for B is 1 letters long, classified as a character, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \be\. Corpus data places it at rank #666 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Deuxième lettre et première consonne de l’alphabet latin (en majuscule).".
Zero misspellings are on record for B in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "be", "BD", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 B, spelled B.
Definition
- 1Deuxième lettre et première consonne de l’alphabet latin (en majuscule).
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 “B”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is B - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \be\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. B vs by
- 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.