dead
\dɛd\
The verdict
“dead” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #7,298 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #7,298
- frequency rank, French
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Mort, sans vie. Qui était en vie mais ne l’est plus.
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 | dead |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \dɛd\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #7,298 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “dead” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for dead is 4 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \dɛd\. Corpus data places it at rank #7,298 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for dead, with forms such as "daed", "ddead", and "deadd". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "des", "der", "DVD", 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 dead, spelled D-E-A-D.
Definition
- 1Mort, sans vie. Qui était en vie mais ne l’est plus.
- 2Qui est détesté au point d’être ignoré, considéré comme mort et enterré.
- 3Qui ne fonctionne plus ; qui n’est pas en marche.
- 4Au cricket, se dit de la balle lorsqu’elle n'est pas en jeu, qu’il n’y a aucune possibilité de marquer de point et qu’aucun batteur ne peut être retiré.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: daed,ddead,deadd,deda,edad
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of dead - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “dead”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is D-E-A-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \dɛd\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “des” - see the side-by-side comparison. dead vs des
- 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.