difficulté

\di.fi.kyl.te\

/\di.fi.kyl.te\/ noun

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

The verdict

“difficulté” has 14 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #2,072. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#2,072
frequency rank, French
5,307
“D” headwords
14
tracked misspellings
2
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Ce qui rend une chose difficile.

Corpus desk

Index FR-difficulte · difficulté · French

difficulté · rank #2,072 · 14 variants · 2 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #2,072
  • LEN-MEGA 10 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-LOW 2 pairs
  • VAR-HIGH 14 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,307
  • PHOTO-FINISH conflit

Nearest frequency peer: conflit (-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 « difficulté »

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

corpus weight

What this shows « difficulté » 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).

difficulté vs difficultés
91% similar
difficulté vs difficile
70% similar

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

Key facts for difficulté
PropertyValue
Headworddifficulté
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\di.fi.kyl.te\
Letters10
Frequency rank#2,072
Misspellings tracked14
Confusable pairs2
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « difficulté »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).difficultése 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 « conflit » (#2,071), « essentiel » (#2,073), « climat » (#2,070). Parmi 5,307 lemmes en « D », « difficulté » est au #2,072. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 14 spelling variants around difficulté (IPA \di.fi.kyl.te\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #2,072 among 5,307 “D” headwords. Wiktionary lists 10 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 14 likely wrong-spelling variants for difficulté, with forms such as "ddifficulté", "dfificulté", and "diffciulté". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 2 confusable-pair relationships, "difficultés", "difficile", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is difficulté, spelled D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-É.

Definition

  1. 1
    Ce qui rend une chose difficile.
  2. 2
    Manque de facilité pour quelque action que ce soit.
  3. 3
    Misère.
  4. 4
    Ce qu’il y a de difficile en quelque chose, obstacle, empêchement, traverse, opposition.
  5. 5
    Pour marquer l’adhésion, le consentement.
  6. 6
    Obscurité d’un texte, passage difficile à comprendre.
  7. 7
    Morceaux de musique d’une exécution difficile.
  8. 8
    Objection, raison alléguée contre.
  9. 9
    Problèmes embarrassants.
  10. 10
    Différend, contestation.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. […], il était inutile de nous adresser au ministère où nous aurions, sans doute, les plus grandes difficultés à nous faire expliquer comment, pour la Gironde, on avait trouvé cette somme de 4.950 francs par kilomètre de routes nationales à départementaliser.
  2. La difficulté d’une opération.

Synonyms

arduitéarduosité

This word in other languages

difficulty(English)dificultad(Español)Schwierigkeit(Deutsch)dificuldade(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • ddifficulté
  • dfificulté
  • diffciulté
  • difficculté
  • difficluté
  • difficullté
  • difficulte
  • difficultté
  • difficulét
  • difficutlé
  • diffiuclté
  • dificulté
  • dififculté
  • idfficulté

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of difficulté - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.

ddifficulté1dfificulté2diffciulté2difficculté1difficluté2difficullté1difficulte1difficultté1
Edit distance from "difficulté"

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 "difficulté"?
"difficulté" is spelled D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-É. The IPA pronunciation is \di.fi.kyl.te\.
What does "difficulté" mean?
As a noun, "difficulté" means: Ce qui rend une chose difficile.
What words are commonly confused with "difficulté"?
"difficulté" is commonly confused with "difficultés", "difficile". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "difficulté"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "difficulté" is \di.fi.kyl.te\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "difficulté" come from?
"difficulté" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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 "difficulté", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

mouvements#2,090restaurant#2,054réellement#2,101démocratie#2,038

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (14 here; floor ≥5).

frontière14 variantsphénomène14 variantsauparavant14 variantscommentaire14 variants

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list