falloir

/\fa.lwaʁ\/ verb

Letters

7 characters

Frequency Rank

#2,923

in French word usage

Misspellings

8

tracked variants

Confusables

3

similar word pairs

falloir is aFrenchverb. It means: Être de nécessité, de devoir, d’obligation, de bienséance. Pronounced \fa.lwaʁ\. It ranks #2,923 in French word frequency. Often confused with Fallon and fallout.

Key facts for falloir
PropertyValue
Headwordfalloir
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\fa.lwaʁ\
Letters7
Frequency rank#2,923
Misspellings tracked8
Confusable pairs3
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

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

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for falloir is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \fa.lwaʁ\. Corpus data places it at rank #2,923 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.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 falloir, with forms such as "aflloir", "fallior", and "falloirr". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "Fallon", "fallout", "fallait", 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 falloir, spelled F-A-L-L-O-I-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Être de nécessité, de devoir, d’obligation, de bienséance.
  2. 2
    Être ce dont on a besoin.
  3. 3
    Ce que l’on doit donner d’argent à quelqu’un pour un prix, pour un salaire.
  4. 4
    Manquer.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: aflloir,fallior,falloirr,fallori,faloir,falolir,ffalloir,flaloir

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for falloir

Misspelling Variants of "falloir"

aflloir7fallior7falloirr8fallori7faloir6falolir7ffalloir8flaloir7
Misspelling Variants of "falloir"

Frequency rank: #2,923 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "falloir"?
"falloir" is spelled F-A-L-L-O-I-R. The IPA pronunciation is \fa.lwaʁ\.
What does "falloir" mean?
As a verb, "falloir" means: Être de nécessité, de devoir, d’obligation, de bienséance.
What words are commonly confused with "falloir"?
"falloir" is commonly confused with "Fallon", "fallout", "fallait". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "falloir"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "falloir" is \fa.lwaʁ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "falloir" come from?
"falloir" 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 F 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.