mesa
\me.za\
The verdict
“mesa” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #40,374) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #40,374
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Plateau formé des restes d’une coulée volcanique.
Corpus desk
Index FR-mesa · mesa · French
mesa · rank #40,374 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #40,374
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH mensurations
Nearest frequency peer: mensurations (-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 « mesa »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- maze
maze
59,630 corpus weight
- mensurations
mensurations
59,628 corpus weight
- mesa
mesa
59,627 corpus weight
- millièmes
millièmes
59,626 corpus weight
- moite
moite
59,625 corpus weight
- mondialiste
mondialiste
59,624 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « mesa » 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 | mesa |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \me.za\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #40,374 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « mesa »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for mesa is neighbouring look-alikes ("ms", "mis", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \me.za\. Frequency #40,374 among 5,038 “M” headwords. Gloss: "Plateau formé des restes d’une coulée volcanique.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for mesa, with forms such as "emsa", "messa", and "mmesa". 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, "ms", "mis", "met", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is mesa, spelled M-E-S-A.
Definition
- 1Plateau formé des restes d’une coulée volcanique.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mesa appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La petite ville se coulait comme dans le fond d’un canyon entre une mesa – une formation rocheuse spectaculaire, aux versants abrupts et au sommet plat – et les premiers contreforts des Rocheuses, une géologie violente et tourmentée qui reflétait, pâlis, des travellings panoramiques de western, ceux que l’on regardait le mardi soir en éteignant la lumière…
C’est bien de ce paysage que rêvait Jemia. Ce pays qu’elle porte sans doute dans sa mémoire génétique, et qu’elle a cru reconnaître la première fois qu’elle est allée au Nouveau-Mexique, dans la vallée du Rio Grande ou du Rio Puerco, l’immensité aux couleurs de sable et d’ocre, les mesas bleues des Indiens, et le ciel sans limites, semé de nuages mousseux.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- emsa
- messa
- mmesa
- msea
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of mesa - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 "mesa", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).