by
\bi\
The verdict
“by” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #2,462) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #2,462
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Fossé qui traverse un étang, aboutissant à sa bonde.
Corpus desk
Index FR-by · by · French
by · rank #2,462 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #2,462
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH attente
Nearest frequency peer: attente (-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 “by”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- accepte
accepte
97,542 corpus weight
- Alexandre
Alexandre
97,541 corpus weight
- attente
attente
97,540 corpus weight
- by
by
97,539 corpus weight
- cercle
cercle
97,538 corpus weight
- cesse
cesse
97,537 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “by” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | by |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \bi\ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #2,462 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Où “by” se place dans la fréquence du français
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for by is neighbouring look-alikes ("bye", "B", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \bi\. Frequency #2,462 among 4,251 “B” headwords. Gloss: "Fossé qui traverse un étang, aboutissant à sa bonde.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for by, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "bye", "B", "be", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is by, spelled B-Y.
Definition
- 1Fossé qui traverse un étang, aboutissant à sa bonde.
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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What to do next
You've looked up "by". Here's where to go from here.
- "by" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "bye". View pair
- Usage frequency rank #2,462 among French headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more French words in the "B" letter cohort. B–Z browse
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.