lys
\lis\
The verdict
“lys” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #14,079) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #14,079
- frequency rank, French
- 2,567
- “L” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Genre de liliacées qui porte, sur une haute tige, des fleurs à trois pétales et trois sépales pétaloïdes.
Corpus desk
Index FR-lys · lys · French
lys · rank #14,079 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #14,079
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,567
- PHOTO-FINISH luna
Nearest frequency peer: luna (-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 « lys »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- licencié
licencié
85,925 corpus weight
- list
list
85,924 corpus weight
- luna
luna
85,923 corpus weight
- lys
lys
85,922 corpus weight
- madonna
madonna
85,921 corpus weight
- malins
malins
85,920 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « lys » 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 | lys |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \lis\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #14,079 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « lys »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for lys is neighbouring look-alikes ("L", "la", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \lis\. Frequency #14,079 among 2,567 “L” headwords. 6 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for lys, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "L", "la", "le", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is lys, spelled L-Y-S.
Definition
- 1Genre de liliacées qui porte, sur une haute tige, des fleurs à trois pétales et trois sépales pétaloïdes.
- 2Fleur du lys blanc.
- 3Couleur très blanche de la fleur.
- 4Fleur de lys.
- 5Fleur de lys.
- 6Fleur de lys.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how lys appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[…] et la nuit n’était troublée que par les brusques paraboles des fusées éclairantes qui montaient aux deux côtés du marécage et, parvenues au sommet de leur courbe, ouvraient leurs cônes blancs et s’épanchaient doucement comme des lys renversés.
Le jeune businessman rencontra Édolfius et offrit des lys roses à la mère de Tatiana.
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 "lys", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).