lai
\lɛ\
The verdict
“lai” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,335) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,335
- frequency rank, French
- 2,567
- “L” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Laïc, convers.
Corpus desk
Index FR-lai · lai · French
lai · rank #19,335 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,335
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,567
- PHOTO-FINISH Kyoto
Nearest frequency peer: Kyoto (-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 « lai »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Ketchup
Ketchup
80,669 corpus weight
- kWh
kWh
80,668 corpus weight
- Kyoto
Kyoto
80,667 corpus weight
- lai
lai
80,666 corpus weight
- lulu
lulu
80,664 corpus weight
- lustres
lustres
80,663 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « lai » 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 | lai |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \lɛ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #19,335 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « lai »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for lai is neighbouring look-alikes ("le", "Lu", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \lɛ\. Frequency #19,335 among 2,567 “L” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No misspelling variants are generated for lai in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. 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.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is lai, spelled L-A-I.
Definition
- 1Laïc, convers.
- 2Séculier.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how lai appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un second frère lai conduisait une mule de rechange, chargée, selon toute probabilité, du bagage de son supérieur.
Bazin devint frère lai.
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 "lai"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "lai", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).