essayer

/\e.se.je\/ verb

Letters

7 characters

Frequency Rank

#963

in French word usage

Misspellings

8

tracked variants

Confusables

17

similar word pairs

essayer is aFrenchverb. It means: Mettre à l’essai ; vérifier le bon fonctionnement. Pronounced \e.se.je\. It ranks #963 in French word frequency. Often confused with étayer and essuyé.

Key facts for essayer
PropertyValue
Headwordessayer
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\e.se.je\
Letters7
Frequency rank#963
Misspellings tracked8
Confusable pairs17
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

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

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for essayer is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \e.se.je\. Corpus data places it at rank #963 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for essayer, with forms such as "esasyer", "esayer", and "essaeyr". 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 17 confusable-pair relationships, "étayer", "essuyé", "essayez", 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 essayer, spelled E-S-S-A-Y-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Mettre à l’essai ; vérifier le bon fonctionnement.
  2. 2
    Porter un vêtement ou un accessoire pour vérifier s’il convient, s’il est à la bonne taille.
  3. 3
    Vérifier la composition et le titre de certains produits.
  4. 4
    Tenter ; oser.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: esasyer,esayer,essaeyr,essayerr,essayre,essayyer,essyaer,sesayer

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for essayer

Misspelling Variants of "essayer"

esasyer7esayer6essaeyr7essayerr8essayre7essayyer8essyaer7sesayer7
Misspelling Variants of "essayer"

Frequency rank: #963 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "essayer"?
"essayer" is spelled E-S-S-A-Y-E-R. The IPA pronunciation is \e.se.je\.
What does "essayer" mean?
As a verb, "essayer" means: Mettre à l’essai ; vérifier le bon fonctionnement.
What words are commonly confused with "essayer"?
"essayer" is commonly confused with "étayer", "essuyé", "essayez". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "essayer"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "essayer" is \e.se.je\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "essayer" come from?
"essayer" 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.