boa
\bo.a\
The verdict
“boa” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #29,666 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #29,666
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Genre de serpents qui se trouvent principalement en Amérique du Sud et qui sont les plus forts et les plus grands que l’on connaisse.
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 | boa |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \bo.a\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #29,666 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “boa” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for boa is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \bo.a\. Corpus data places it at rank #29,666 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
boa doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bu", "Br", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
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 boa, spelled B-O-A.
Definition
- 1Genre de serpents qui se trouvent principalement en Amérique du Sud et qui sont les plus forts et les plus grands que l’on connaisse.
- 2Tour de cou en fourrure ou en plumes.
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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Using “boa”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is B-O-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \bo.a\ (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. boa 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.