civil

\si.vil\

/\si.vil\/ adj

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“civil” has 7 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #2,665. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#2,665
frequency rank, French
8,609
“C” headwords
7
tracked misspellings
10
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Citoyen ; relatif aux citoyens.

Corpus desk

Index FR-civil · civil · French

civil · rank #2,665 · 7 variants · 10 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #2,665
  • LEN-MID 5 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-MID 10 pairs
  • VAR-MID 7 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 8,609
  • PHOTO-FINISH clés

Nearest frequency peer: clés (+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.

Pairs de rang près de l'aimant d'erreurs « civil »

Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin

corpus weight

What this shows « civil » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

civil vs CNIL
0% similar
civil vs Cyril
40% similar
civil vs Covid
40% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for civil
PropertyValue
Headwordcivil
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdjective
IPA\si.vil\
Letters5
Frequency rank#2,665
Misspellings tracked7
Confusable pairs10
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « civil »

Cette échelle va du noyau du français courant (gauche) jusqu'à la traîne des formes rares (droite).civilse place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « clés » (#2,666), « chevaux » (#2,663), « connaissent » (#2,667). Parmi 8,609 lemmes en « C », « civil » est au #2,665. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 7 spelling variants around civil (IPA \si.vil\), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #2,665 among 8,609 “C” headwords. Wiktionary lists 8 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for civil, with forms such as "ccivil", "ciivl", and "civill". 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 10 confusable-pair relationships, "CNIL", "Cyril", "Covid", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is civil, spelled C-I-V-I-L.

Definition

  1. 1
    Citoyen ; relatif aux citoyens.
  2. 2
    Relatif à l’état civil des personnes.
  3. 3
    Qualifie le droit relatif à la personne physique, c’est-à-dire l'ensemble des règles qui déterminent le statut des personnes, aux relations juridiques entre elles, et aux biens. → voir droit civil
  4. 4
    Qui n'est ni militaire, ni religieux, ni politique.
  5. 5
    Qualifie le mariage contracté devant un officier d’état-civil
  6. 6
    Qualifie les obsèques faites sans aucune cérémonie religieuse.
  7. 7
    Qui appartient à la société, par opposition à sauvage.
  8. 8
    Affable ; poli ; courtois.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how civil appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. La vie, la société civile.
  2. La vigueur qui, durant cinq ans, lui fit dévouer sa tête aux fureurs civiles,

Synonyms

aimablebeaubien élevébienséantcomplaisantcorrectcourtoisgentilhonnêtepoli

This word in other languages

civil(English)civil(Español)Zivilist(Deutsch)civil(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • ccivil
  • ciivl
  • civill
  • civli
  • civvil
  • cviil
  • icvil

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of civil - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.

ccivil1ciivl2civill1civli2civvil1cviil2icvil2
Edit distance from "civil"

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 "civil"?
"civil" is spelled C-I-V-I-L. The IPA pronunciation is \si.vil\.
What does "civil" mean?
As an adjective, "civil" means: Citoyen ; relatif aux citoyens.
What words are commonly confused with "civil"?
"civil" is commonly confused with "CNIL", "Cyril", "Covid". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "civil"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "civil" is \si.vil\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "civil" come from?
"civil" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "civil", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

désir#2,670aurez#2,658apple#2,657voile#2,653

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).

clés7 variantsallant7 variantslourd7 variantsmener7 variants

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list