dey
\dɛ\
The verdict
“dey” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #38,244) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #38,244
- frequency rank, French
- 5,307
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Chef militaire ottoman, vassal du bey.
Corpus desk
Index FR-dey · dey · French
dey · rank #38,244 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #38,244
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,307
- PHOTO-FINISH dessinait
Nearest frequency peer: dessinait (-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 « dey »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Danilo
Danilo
61,761 corpus weight
- deir
deir
61,759 corpus weight
- dessinait
dessinait
61,758 corpus weight
- dey
dey
61,757 corpus weight
- diocésain
diocésain
61,755 corpus weight
- discrétionn…
discrétionnaire
61,754 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « dey » 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 | dey |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \dɛ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #38,244 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « dey »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for dey is neighbouring look-alikes ("du", "dr", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \dɛ\. Frequency #38,244 among 5,307 “D” headwords. Gloss: "Chef militaire ottoman, vassal du bey.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for dey, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "du", "dr", "di", 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 explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is dey, spelled D-E-Y.
Definition
- 1Chef militaire ottoman, vassal du bey.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how dey appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Originaire de Tavera, né en 1518 et enlevé tout jeune sur les côtes de Corse, Hassan Corso se convertit à l'Islam, devint caïd d'Alger en 1549, puis dey en 1556.
Le dey de Tunis.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "dey", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).