cher
\ʃɛʁ\
The verdict
“cher” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #682 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #682
- frequency rank, French
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Qui est chéri, tendrement aimé, auquel on tient beaucoup.
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 | cher |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ʃɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #682 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cher” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for cher is 4 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ʃɛʁ\. Corpus data places it at rank #682 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for cher, with forms such as "ccher", "cehr", and "cherr". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "CR", "clé", "Cyr", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is cher, spelled C-H-E-R.
Definition
- 1Qui est chéri, tendrement aimé, auquel on tient beaucoup.
- 2Auquel on attache une grande importance.
- 3Formule de politesse.
- 4Qui a un prix élevé ; qui est coûteux.
- 5Dont le prix est plus haut que les autres.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccher,cehr,cherr,chher,chre,hcer
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cher - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “cher”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-H-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ʃɛʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “CR” - see the side-by-side comparison. cher vs CR
- 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.