fœtus
\fe.tys\
The verdict
“fœtus” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #19,296 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #19,296
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 10
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Organisme en voie de développement, chez les animaux vivipares. Il a dépassé le stade d’embryon mais n’est pas encore né.
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 | fœtus |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \fe.tys\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #19,296 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “fœtus” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for fœtus is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \fe.tys\. Corpus data places it at rank #19,296 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Organisme en voie de développement, chez les animaux vivipares. Il a dépassé le stade d’embryon mais n’est pas encore né.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for fœtus, with forms such as "ffœtus", "ftœus", and "fœtsu". 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 10 confusable-pair relationships, "fus", "fous", "fûts", 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 fœtus, spelled F-Œ-T-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Organisme en voie de développement, chez les animaux vivipares. Il a dépassé le stade d’embryon mais n’est pas encore né.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ffœtus,ftœus,fœtsu,fœttus,fœtuss,fœuts,œftus
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of fœtus - 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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “fœtus, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/f-tus
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "fœtus"?
What does "fœtus" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "fœtus"?
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Using “fœtus”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is F-Œ-T-U-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \fe.tys\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “fus” - see the side-by-side comparison. fœtus vs fus
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our French index: