chapeau
\ʃa.po\
The verdict
“chapeau” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #3,390 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,390
- frequency rank, French
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 11
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Coiffe d’homme ou de femme, plus ou moins rigide, avec des bords.
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 | chapeau |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʃa.po\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #3,390 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 11 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “chapeau” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for chapeau is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ʃa.po\. Corpus data places it at rank #3,390 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for chapeau, with forms such as "cahpeau", "cchapeau", and "chaepau". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 11 confusable-pair relationships, "chapel", "château", "châteaux", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 chapeau, spelled C-H-A-P-E-A-U.
Definition
- 1Coiffe d’homme ou de femme, plus ou moins rigide, avec des bords.
- 2Partie supérieure ronde de certains types de champignons appelée aussi tête ou carpophore.
- 3Lignes de texte, mises en valeur, qui introduisent un article de journal ou de magazine, ou un texte dans un manuel scolaire.
- 4Chose qui a un rapport de forme ou de destination avec un chapeau.
- 5Coiffe d’un axe, d’une extrémité d’une pièce mécanique.
- 6Pièce de bois dur sur la tête des bittes.
- 7Sorte de truble.
- 8Marc qui reste au fond d’un alambic.
- 9Trait demi-circulaire, nommé aussi liaison.
- 10Accent circonflexe.
- 11Chapeau de cardinal, dignité de cardinal.
- 12Se dit d'une variable surmontée d’un accent circonflexe.
- 13Pièce de bois servant de plafond aux galeries de mine.
- 14Élément de protection couvrant la sortie de toit d’une cheminée.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cahpeau,cchapeau,chaepau,chapaeu,chapeua,chappeau,chhapeau,chpaeau,hcapeau
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of chapeau - 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
How do you spell "chapeau"?
What does "chapeau" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "chapeau"?
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Using “chapeau”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-H-A-P-E-A-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ʃa.po\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “chapel” - see the side-by-side comparison. chapeau vs chapel
- 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.