legal
\leˈɡaːl\
The verdict
“legal” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #24,656 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #24,656
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Légal, légale : conforme à la loi.
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 | legal |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \leˈɡaːl\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #24,656 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “legal” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for legal is 5 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \leˈɡaːl\. Corpus data places it at rank #24,656 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for legal, with forms such as "elgal", "leagl", and "legall". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "liga", "legs", "Lena", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 legal, spelled L-E-G-A-L.
Definition
- 1Légal, légale : conforme à la loi.
- 2Légal, légale : concernant, sur le plan de la loi.
- 3Légal, légale : fondé sur, fixé par la loi.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: elgal,leagl,legall,leggal,legla,lgeal,llegal
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of legal - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “legal”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is L-E-G-A-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \leˈɡaːl\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “liga” - see the side-by-side comparison. legal vs liga
- 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.