mis
\mi\
The verdict
“mis” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #339 in French word frequency and used as a verb.
- #339
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Participe passé masculin de mettre.
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 | mis |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \mi\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #339 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mis” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for mis is 3 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mi\. Corpus data places it at rank #339 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
mis has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mm", "MR", "my", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is mis, spelled M-I-S.
Definition
- 1Participe passé masculin de mettre.
- 2Première personne du singulier du passé simple de mettre.
- 3Deuxième personne du singulier du passé simple de mettre.
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 “mis”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-I-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \mi\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “mm” - see the side-by-side comparison. mis vs mm
- 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.