dan
\dan\
The verdict
“dan” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #4,065) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #4,065
- frequency rank, French
- 5,307
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Grade, degré de qualification dans la pratique d’un art martial, qui se traduit en général par le port d’une ceinture noire (contrairement aux grades kyu).
Corpus desk
Index FR-dan · dan · French
dan · rank #4,065 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #4,065
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,307
- PHOTO-FINISH da
Nearest frequency peer: da (-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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « dan »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- constitué
constitué
95,939 corpus weight
- couvrir
couvrir
95,938 corpus weight
- da
da
95,937 corpus weight
- dan
dan
95,936 corpus weight
- donnez
donnez
95,935 corpus weight
- dons
dons
95,934 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « dan » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
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 | dan |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \dan\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,065 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « dan »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for dan is neighbouring look-alikes ("de", "du", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \dan\. Frequency #4,065 among 5,307 “D” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
dan doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "de", "du", "dr", 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 pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is dan, spelled D-A-N.
Definition
- 1Grade, degré de qualification dans la pratique d’un art martial, qui se traduit en général par le port d’une ceinture noire (contrairement aux grades kyu).
- 2Niveau, hauteur d’une coupe, d’une frappe, d’une garde.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how dan appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le plus haut grade atteint jusqu'à présent en aïkido est la ceinture noire neuvième dan.
Il y a dix dan au judo, le grade le plus élevé est le dixième. Les judokas classés entre le premier et le cinquième portent une ceinture noire. Du sixième au huitième, ils portent une ceinture blanche et rouge. Enfin pour les neuvième et dixième dan, la ceinture est rouge.
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
How do you spell "dan"?
What does "dan" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "dan"?
How do you pronounce "dan"?
What language does "dan" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "dan", not the corpus desk frequency band.