département

\de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\

/\de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\/ noun

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

The verdict

“département” has 18 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #1,136. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#1,136
frequency rank, French
5,307
“D” headwords
18
tracked misspellings
6
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Chacune des parties des affaires d’État, distribuées entre les ministres et dont la connaissance leur est attribuée.

Corpus desk

Index FR-departement · département · French

département · rank #1,136 · 18 variants · 6 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #1,136
  • LEN-MEGA 11 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-MID 6 pairs
  • VAR-HIGH 18 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,307
  • PHOTO-FINISH chanson

Nearest frequency peer: chanson (-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 « département »

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

corpus weight

What this shows « département » 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).

département vs department
82% similar
département vs dépassement
82% similar
département vs désarmement
82% similar

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

Key facts for département
PropertyValue
Headworddépartement
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\
Letters11
Frequency rank#1,136
Misspellings tracked18
Confusable pairs6
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « département »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).départementse place ici:

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

L'axe est logarithmique: chaque tic marque environ dix fois moins de fréquence. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « chanson » (#1,135), « environnement » (#1,137), « banque » (#1,134). Parmi 5,307 lemmes en « D », « département » est au #1,136. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 18 spelling variants around département (IPA \de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #1,136 among 5,307 “D” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 18 likely wrong-spelling variants for département, with forms such as "ddépartement", "departement", and "dpéartement". 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 6 confusable-pair relationships, "department", "dépassement", "désarmement", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is département, spelled D-É-P-A-R-T-E-M-E-N-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    Chacune des parties des affaires d’État, distribuées entre les ministres et dont la connaissance leur est attribuée.
  2. 2
    Principale division administrative du territoire français. La France compte cent départements dont quatre départements d’outre-mer.
  3. 3
    L’administration qui dirige ce territoire.
  4. 4
    L’ensemble des habitants de ce territoire.
  5. 5
    Province, par opposition à la capitale.
  6. 6
    Unité dans le schéma d’organisation hiérarchique à l’intérieur d’une entreprise.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. A l’est de l’afrag s’étendait une sorte d’esplanade, le mechouar, bordé de tentes faisant office de benikas ou bureaux où les vizirs et leurs secrétaires venaient expédier les affaires de leur département.
  2. Le département de la Guerre.

This word in other languages

department(English)departamento(Español)Ministerium(Deutsch)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • ddépartement
  • departement
  • dpéartement
  • déaprtement
  • déparetment
  • déparrtement
  • départeemnt
  • départemennt
  • départementt
  • départemetn
  • départemment
  • départemnet
  • départmeent
  • départtement
  • dépatrement
  • déppartement
  • dépratement
  • édpartement

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of département - 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.

ddépartement1departement1dpéartement2déaprtement2déparetment2déparrtement1départeemnt2départemennt1
Edit distance from "département"

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 "département"?
"département" is spelled D-É-P-A-R-T-E-M-E-N-T. The IPA pronunciation is \de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\.
What does "département" mean?
As a noun, "département" means: Chacune des parties des affaires d’État, distribuées entre les ministres et dont la connaissance leur est attribuée.
What words are commonly confused with "département"?
"département" is commonly confused with "department", "dépassement", "désarmement". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "département"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "département" is \de.paʁ.tə.mɑ̃\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "département" come from?
"département" is a French word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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 "département", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 11 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

application#1,133utilisation#1,215responsable#1,044directement#938

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (18 here; floor ≥5).

environnement18 variantsinformations18 variantsenseignement18 variantsparfaitement18 variants

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list