étaient
\e.tɛ\
The verdict
“étaient” has 10 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #238. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #238
- frequency rank, French
- 1,805
- “É” headwords
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 15
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de être.
Corpus desk
Index FR-etaient · étaient · French
étaient · rank #238 · 10 variants · 15 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #238
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 15 pairs
- VAR-MID 10 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,805
- PHOTO-FINISH tête
Nearest frequency peer: tête (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “étaient”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- maison
maison
99,766 corpus weight
- saint
saint
99,765 corpus weight
- tête
tête
99,764 corpus weight
- étaient
étaient
99,763 corpus weight
- 6
6
99,762 corpus weight
- aurait
aurait
99,760 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “étaient” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | étaient |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \e.tɛ\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #238 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 15 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “étaient” sits in French frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 10 spelling variants around étaient (IPA \e.tɛ\), averb. Corpus frequency is #238 among 1,805 “É” headwords. Dominant gloss: "Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de être.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for étaient, with forms such as "etaient", "téaient", and "éatient". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 15 confusable-pair relationships, "était", "étant", "étain", 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 spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is étaient, spelled É-T-A-I-E-N-T.
Definition
- 1Troisième personne du pluriel de l’imparfait de être.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how étaient appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Avant, ses parents étaient chouettes, mais depuis quelques mois, ils la fliquent, la surveillent.
Charles-Quint avait fait écrire des Heures pour sa maîtresse dont toutes les bordures étaient ornées de figures extravagantes, peintes par Albert Dürer: c’étaient des singes qui se clystérisaient les uns les autres et commettaient entre eux mille indécences.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- etaient
- téaient
- éatient
- étaeint
- étaiennt
- étaientt
- étaietn
- étainet
- étiaent
- éttaient
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of étaient - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 3, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "étaient"?
What does "étaient" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "étaient"?
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What language does "étaient" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "étaient", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (10 here; floor ≥5).
What to do next
You've looked up "étaient". Here's where to go from here.
- "étaient" maps to 15 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "était". View pair
- 10 edit-distance misspelling variants are generated for spell-check research on this headword. See variants
- Usage frequency rank #238 among French headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more French words in the "É" letter cohort. É–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.