moa
\mɔ.a\
The verdict
“moa” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #45,173 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #45,173
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Une des espèces d'oiseaux terrestres (ratites) géants (jusqu'à trois mètres de haut), incapables de voler, originaires de Nouvelle-Zélande, éteintes après l'arrivée des ancêtres des Maori.
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 | moa |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mɔ.a\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #45,173 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “moa” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for moa is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mɔ.a\. Corpus data places it at rank #45,173 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Une des espèces d'oiseaux terrestres (ratites) géants (jusqu'à trois mètres de haut), incapables de voler, originaires de Nouvelle-Zélande, éteintes après l'arrivée des ancêtres des Maori.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for moa in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "MR", "my", "ms", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
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 moa, spelled M-O-A.
Definition
- 1Une des espèces d'oiseaux terrestres (ratites) géants (jusqu'à trois mètres de haut), incapables de voler, originaires de Nouvelle-Zélande, éteintes après l'arrivée des ancêtres des Maori.
This word in other languages
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 “moa”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-O-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \mɔ.a\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “MR” - see the side-by-side comparison. moa vs MR
- 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.