FAO
\ɛf.ɑ.o\
The verdict
“FAO” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #21,622) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #21,622
- frequency rank, French
- 3,276
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Organisation des Nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture.
Corpus desk
Index FR-fao · FAO · French
FAO · rank #21,622 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #21,622
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,276
- PHOTO-FINISH facho
Nearest frequency peer: facho (-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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « FAO »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- exposants
exposants
78,382 corpus weight
- fables
fables
78,381 corpus weight
- facho
facho
78,380 corpus weight
- FAO
FAO
78,379 corpus weight
- fascine
fascine
78,378 corpus weight
- fente
fente
78,377 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « FAO » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
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 | FAO |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | \ɛf.ɑ.o\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #21,622 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « FAO »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for FAO is neighbouring look-alikes ("FN", "FC", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced \ɛf.ɑ.o\. Frequency #21,622 among 3,276 “F” headwords. Gloss: "Organisation des Nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture.".
FAO has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "FN", "FC", "fo", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is FAO, spelled F-A-O.
Definition
- 1Organisation des Nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture.
This word in other languages
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "FAO"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "FAO", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).