jail
\dʒeɪl\
The verdict
“jail” is uncommon French (frequency #68,380 among 957 “J” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #68,380
- frequency rank, French
- 957
- “J” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Geôle, prison.
Corpus desk
Index FR-jail · jail · French
jail · rank #68,380 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #68,380
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 957
- PHOTO-FINISH jacquier
Nearest frequency peer: jacquier (-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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « jail »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Jacmel
Jacmel
31,623 corpus weight
- jacquier
jacquier
31,622 corpus weight
- jail
jail
31,621 corpus weight
- janséniste
janséniste
31,620 corpus weight
- jansénistes
jansénistes
31,619 corpus weight
- Jehanne
Jehanne
31,618 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « jail » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | jail |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \dʒeɪl\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #68,380 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « jail » en français
Rare enough to double-check
jail is uncommon French at frequency #68,380 among 957 “J” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \dʒeɪl\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Geôle, prison.".
jail has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is jail, spelled J-A-I-L.
Definition
- 1Geôle, prison.
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 "jail", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).