formal
\fɔʁ.mal\
The verdict
“formal” is uncommon French (frequency #83,888 among 137,178 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #83,888
- frequency rank, French
- 137,178
- “F” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Corps obtenu par l’action de l’acide sulfurique étendu de peroxyde de manganèse sur l’esprit de bois.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | formal |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \fɔʁ.mal\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #83,888 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “formal” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
formal is uncommon French at frequency #83,888 among 137,178 “F” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \fɔʁ.mal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Corps obtenu par l’action de l’acide sulfurique étendu de peroxyde de manganèse sur l’esprit de bois.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for formal, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 formal, spelled F-O-R-M-A-L.
Definition
- 1Corps obtenu par l’action de l’acide sulfurique étendu de peroxyde de manganèse sur l’esprit de bois.
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.
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Using “formal”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is F-O-R-M-A-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \fɔʁ.mal\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
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.