la
\la\
The verdict
“la” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #2) as an article. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #2
- frequency rank, French
- 2,567
- “L” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - Féminin singulier de le. Détermine un groupe nominal féminin singulier.
Corpus desk
Index FR-la · la · French
la · rank #2 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #2
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,567
- PHOTO-FINISH de
Nearest frequency peer: de (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “la”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- de
de
100,000 corpus weight
- la
la
99,999 corpus weight
- le
le
99,998 corpus weight
- et
et
99,997 corpus weight
- L
L
99,996 corpus weight
- les
les
99,994 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “la” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | la |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Article |
| IPA | \la\ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #2 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “la” sits in French frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for la is neighbouring look-alikes ("le", "Lu", …), not just typos; it is anarticle pronounced \la\. Frequency #2 among 2,567 “L” headwords. Gloss: "Féminin singulier de le. Détermine un groupe nominal féminin singulier.".
la has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "le", "Lu", "Li", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
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 la, spelled L-A.
Definition
- 1Féminin singulier de le. Détermine un groupe nominal féminin singulier.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how la appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Vous n’êtes pas une femme, vous êtes la femme ! Et, comme suprême parangon de grâces et de beauté, vous vous devez à l’admiration de tous.
C'était la Cornuel qui leur avait conseillé cette expédition nocturne et ils n'avaient pas perdu de temps pour l'entreprendre.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.