encourage

/\ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\/ verb

Letters

9 characters

Frequency Rank

#7,313

in French word usage

Misspellings

12

tracked variants

Confusables

8

similar word pairs

encourage is aFrenchverb. It means: Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de encourager. Pronounced \ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\. It ranks #7,313 in French word frequency. Often confused with encourue and entourage.

Key facts for encourage
PropertyValue
Headwordencourage
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\
Letters9
Frequency rank#7,313
Misspellings tracked12
Confusable pairs8
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of encourage in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for encourage is 9 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\. Corpus data places it at rank #7,313 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for encourage, with forms such as "ecnourage", "enccourage", and "encoruage". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 8 confusable-pair relationships, "encourue", "entourage", "encourager", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is encourage, spelled E-N-C-O-U-R-A-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de encourager.
  2. 2
    Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de encourager.
  3. 3
    Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de encourager.
  4. 4
    Troisième personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de encourager.
  5. 5
    Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif de encourager.

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: ecnourage,enccourage,encoruage,encouarge,encouraeg,encouragge,encourgae,encourrage,encuorage,enncourage,enocurage,necourage

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for encourage

Misspelling Variants of "encourage"

ecnourage9enccourage10encoruage9encouarge9encouraeg9encouragge10encourgae9encourrage10
Misspelling Variants of "encourage"

Frequency rank: #7,313 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "encourage"?
"encourage" is spelled E-N-C-O-U-R-A-G-E. The IPA pronunciation is \ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\.
What does "encourage" mean?
As a verb, "encourage" means: Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de encourager.
What words are commonly confused with "encourage"?
"encourage" is commonly confused with "encourue", "entourage", "encourager". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "encourage"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "encourage" is \ɑ̃.ku.ʁaʒ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "encourage" come from?
"encourage" 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.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter E in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.