FBI
\ɛf.bi.aj\
The verdict
“FBI” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #9,163) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #9,163
- frequency rank, French
- 3,276
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Principal service fédéral de police judiciaire des États-Unis.
Corpus desk
Index FR-fbi · FBI · French
FBI · rank #9,163 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #9,163
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,276
- PHOTO-FINISH fantômes
Nearest frequency peer: fantômes (-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 « FBI »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- dévoiler
dévoiler
90,841 corpus weight
- essaient
essaient
90,840 corpus weight
- fantômes
fantômes
90,839 corpus weight
- FBI
FBI
90,838 corpus weight
- fillette
fillette
90,837 corpus weight
- foncière
foncière
90,836 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « FBI » 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 | FBI |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | \ɛf.bi.aj\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #9,163 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « FBI »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for FBI is neighbouring look-alikes ("FN", "FC", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced \ɛf.bi.aj\. Frequency #9,163 among 3,276 “F” headwords. Gloss: "Principal service fédéral de police judiciaire des États-Unis.".
FBI doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, 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, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is FBI, spelled F-B-I.
Definition
- 1Principal service fédéral de police judiciaire des États-Unis.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how FBI appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le sceau du FBI, avec sa devise « fidélité, courage, intégrité », est aussi une image mondialement connue, popularisée par des milliers de séries télévisées et de films.
La radio WSMV de Nashville rapporte que le FBI cherche à déterminer si Warner était victime de la parano 5G, qui veut que les Américains soient espionnés par cette technologie.
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 "FBI"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "FBI", not the corpus desk frequency band.