malaria
\ma.la.ʁja\
The verdict
“malaria” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #30,695 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #30,695
- frequency rank, French
- 7
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Air vicié, pestilence provenant des marécages, qu’on croyait être cause des accès de fièvre dont souffraient périodiquement les habitants de certaines régions.
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 | malaria |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ma.la.ʁja\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #30,695 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “malaria” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for malaria is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ma.la.ʁja\. Corpus data places it at rank #30,695 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for malaria, with forms such as "amlaria", "maalria", and "malaira". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "Maria", "Malawi", "mazarin", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is malaria, spelled M-A-L-A-R-I-A.
Definition
- 1Air vicié, pestilence provenant des marécages, qu’on croyait être cause des accès de fièvre dont souffraient périodiquement les habitants de certaines régions.
- 2Paludisme transmis par l’anophèle, qui se manifeste par des accès de fièvre survenant à des intervalles réguliers.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amlaria,maalria,malaira,malarai,malarria,mallaria,malraia,mlaaria,mmalaria
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of malaria - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “malaria”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-A-L-A-R-I-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ma.la.ʁja\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Maria” - see the side-by-side comparison. malaria vs Maria
- 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.