did
\dɪd\
The verdict
“did” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #24,176) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #24,176
- frequency rank, French
- 5,307
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Prétérit de do.
Corpus desk
Index FR-did · did · French
did · rank #24,176 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #24,176
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,307
- PHOTO-FINISH diagnostics
Nearest frequency peer: diagnostics (-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 « did »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- descendue
descendue
75,828 corpus weight
- diagnostics
diagnostics
75,826 corpus weight
- did
did
75,825 corpus weight
- Diop
Diop
75,824 corpus weight
- disparitions
disparitions
75,823 corpus weight
- divertissem…
divertissements
75,822 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « did » 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 | did |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \dɪd\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #24,176 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « did »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for did is neighbouring look-alikes ("du", "dr", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced \dɪd\. Frequency #24,176 among 5,307 “D” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for did, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "du", "dr", "do", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is did, spelled D-I-D.
Definition
- 1Prétérit de do.
- 2Participe passé de do.
- 3Auxiliaire du prétérit à la forme positive/affirmative, utilisé uniquement pour insister sur quelque chose. Note d’usage : là où en temps normal il fait par exemple écrire « I saw » (« j’ai vu »), « I did see » (« j’ai (vraiment, cependant, bien) vu ») renforce l’action décrite.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how did appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I did discover that, as well as the penknife, Emma also carried a ball of string, which is a marvellous idea.
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 "did", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).