captain
The verdict
“captain” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #14,622 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #14,622
- frequency rank, French
- 7
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 10
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Capitaine (dans un contexte anglophone).
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 | captain |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #14,622 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “captain” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for captain is 7 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #14,622 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Capitaine (dans un contexte anglophone).".
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for captain, with forms such as "acptain", "capatin", and "capptain". 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 10 confusable-pair relationships, "catin", "copain", "captif", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is captain, spelled C-A-P-T-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1Capitaine (dans un contexte anglophone).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acptain,capatin,capptain,captainn,captani,captian,capttain,catpain,ccaptain,cpatain
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of captain - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “captain”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-A-P-T-A-I-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “catin” - see the side-by-side comparison. captain vs catin
- 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.