maintenance
\mɛ̃.tə.nɑ̃s\
The verdict
“maintenance” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #7,460 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,460
- frequency rank, French
- 11
- letters
- 16
- tracked misspellings
- 1
- confusable pair
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Action de maintenir quelque chose en bon état.
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 | maintenance |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mɛ̃.tə.nɑ̃s\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #7,460 |
| Misspellings tracked | 16 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “maintenance” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for maintenance is 11 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mɛ̃.tə.nɑ̃s\. Corpus data places it at rank #7,460 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Action de maintenir quelque chose en bon état.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 16 likely wrong-spelling variants for maintenance, with forms such as "amintenance", "mainetnance", and "mainntenance". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "maintenant", a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is maintenance, spelled M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E.
Definition
- 1Action de maintenir quelque chose en bon état.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amintenance,mainetnance,mainntenance,mainteannce,maintenacne,maintenancce,maintenanec,maintenannce,maintennace,maintennance,maintneance,mainttenance,maitnenance,manitenance,miantenance,mmaintenance
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of maintenance - 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
How do you spell "maintenance"?
What does "maintenance" mean?
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Using “maintenance”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \mɛ̃.tə.nɑ̃s\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “maintenant” - see the side-by-side comparison. maintenance vs maintenant
- 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.