how
\ˈhaʊ\
The verdict
“how” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,887) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,887
- frequency rank, French
- 1,969
- “H” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Comment, de quelle manière.
Corpus desk
Index FR-how · how · French
how · rank #10,887 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,887
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,969
- PHOTO-FINISH horizons
Nearest frequency peer: horizons (-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 « how »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- handicapé
handicapé
89,117 corpus weight
- horizons
horizons
89,115 corpus weight
- how
how
89,114 corpus weight
- humiliation
humiliation
89,113 corpus weight
- identifiés
identifiés
89,112 corpus weight
- ignorent
ignorent
89,111 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « how » 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 | how |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \ˈhaʊ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,887 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « how »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for how is neighbouring look-alikes ("hp", "Hs", …), not just typos; it is anadverb pronounced \ˈhaʊ\. Frequency #10,887 among 1,969 “H” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No misspelling variants are generated for how in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hp", "Hs", "hr", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
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 how, spelled H-O-W.
Definition
- 1Comment, de quelle manière.
- 2De quel degré.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how how appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
How is your new PC?
How did you do it?
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
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "how", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).