dead

\dɛd\

/\dɛd\/ adj

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

The verdict

“dead” has 5 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #7,298. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#7,298
frequency rank, French
5,307
“D” headwords
5
tracked misspellings
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Mort, sans vie. Qui était en vie mais ne l’est plus.

Corpus desk

Index FR-dead · dead · French

dead · rank #7,298 · 5 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #7,298
  • LEN-MID 4 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-MID 5 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,307
  • PHOTO-FINISH Céline

Nearest frequency peer: Céline (-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 « dead »

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

corpus weight

What this shows « dead » 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).

dead vs des
50% similar
dead vs der
50% similar
dead vs DVD
0% similar

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

Key facts for dead
PropertyValue
Headworddead
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdjective
IPA\dɛd\
Letters4
Frequency rank#7,298
Misspellings tracked5
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « dead »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).deadse 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 « Céline » (#7,297), « dernièrement » (#7,299), « cycliste » (#7,296). Parmi 5,307 lemmes en « D », « dead » est au #7,298. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 5 spelling variants around dead (IPA \dɛd\), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #7,298 among 5,307 “D” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

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

  1. 1
    Mort, sans vie. Qui était en vie mais ne l’est plus.
  2. 2
    Qui est détesté au point d’être ignoré, considéré comme mort et enterré.
  3. 3
    Qui ne fonctionne plus ; qui n’est pas en marche.
  4. 4
    Au 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.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Dead Men tell no Tales
  2. When Shulamith Firestone’s body was found late last August, in her studio apartment on the fifth floor of a tenement walkup on East Tenth Street, she had been dead for some days.

Synonyms

deceasedin the gravemortuoussix feet underunalive

Antonyms

alive

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.

daed2ddead1deadd1deda2edad2
Edit distance from "dead"

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 "dead"?
"dead" is spelled D-E-A-D. The IPA pronunciation is \dɛd\.
What does "dead" mean?
As an adjective, "dead" means: Mort, sans vie. Qui était en vie mais ne l’est plus.
What words are commonly confused with "dead"?
"dead" is commonly confused with "des", "der", "DVD". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "dead"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "dead" is \dɛd\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "dead" come from?
"dead" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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 "dead", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

fuck#7,326gaza#7,327hard#7,330wars#7,261

Similar misspelling depth

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

essor5 variantslits5 variantsrevu5 variantsroad5 variants

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list