cou
\ku\
The verdict
“cou” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #3,063 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,063
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Partie du corps qui joint la tête aux épaules.
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 | cou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ku\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,063 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cou” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for cou is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ku\. Corpus data places it at rank #3,063 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Partie du corps qui joint la tête aux épaules.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for cou, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "CV", "Ct", "CP", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is cou, spelled C-O-U.
Definition
- 1Partie du corps qui joint la tête aux épaules.
This word in other languages
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 “cou”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-O-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ku\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “CV” - see the side-by-side comparison. cou vs CV
- 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.