le
\lə\
The verdict
“le” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #3 in French word frequency and used as an article.
- #3
- frequency rank, French
- 2
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Ce… dont on parle maintenant. Déterminant marquant un nom masculin singulier, référant à une seule entité possible dans un contexte.
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 | le |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Article |
| IPA | \lə\ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #3 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “le” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for le is 2 letters long, classified as an article, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \lə\. Corpus data places it at rank #3 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No generated misspelling entries exist for le in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Lu", "Li", "LR", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is le, spelled L-E.
Definition
- 1Ce… dont on parle maintenant. Déterminant marquant un nom masculin singulier, référant à une seule entité possible dans un contexte.
- 2Le seul. Déterminant marquant un nom masculin singulier, référant à une seule entité possible par définition.
- 3(Sujet d’une proposition) Tout, sans exception.
- 4(Le + nom propre) Marquant une vaste région comme un pays, un continent, une province ou un État, ou un cours d’eau.
- 5(Le + nom propre) Marquant un nom propre dont le noyau est issu d’un nom commun.
- 6(Le + nom commun + nom propre) Attribut du nom propre suivant.
- 7(Prénom + le + attribut) Surnom du prénom précédent.
- 8(Le premier, le + numéro de 2 à 31) Le jour du mois, sans jour de la semaine. Note d’usage : Peut fonctionner comme adverbe de temps.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “le”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is L-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \lə\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Lu” - see the side-by-side comparison. le vs Lu
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
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.