moins
\mwɛ̃\
The verdict
“moins” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #118 in French word frequency and used as an adverb.
- #118
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Comparatif de peu. Servant à marquer l’infériorité d’une personne ou d’une chose, comparée à une autre ou à elle-même sous quelque rapport de qualité, de quantité, d’action, etc.
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 | moins |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \mwɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #118 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “moins” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for moins is 5 letters long, classified as an adverb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mwɛ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #118 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.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for moins, with forms such as "mions", "mmoins", and "moinns". 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, "mon", "mos", "mois", 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, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is moins, spelled M-O-I-N-S.
Definition
- 1Comparatif de peu. Servant à marquer l’infériorité d’une personne ou d’une chose, comparée à une autre ou à elle-même sous quelque rapport de qualité, de quantité, d’action, etc.
- 2(Avec le) Superlatif de peu, servant à marquer le dernier degré de l’infériorité.
- 3Comparatif de peu de. Un plus petit nombre de. Une plus petite quantité de.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mions,mmoins,moinns,moinss,moisn,monis,omins
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of moins - 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 “moins”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is M-O-I-N-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \mwɛ̃\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “mon” - see the side-by-side comparison. moins vs mon
- 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.