MP3
\ɛm.pe.tʁwa\
The verdict
“MP3” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #17,770) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #17,770
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Norme d’encodage du son sous forme numérique.
Corpus desk
Index FR-mp3 · MP3 · French
MP3 · rank #17,770 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #17,770
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH moustique
Nearest frequency peer: moustique (-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 « MP3 »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Montmorency
Montmorency
82,233 corpus weight
- moustique
moustique
82,232 corpus weight
- MP3
MP3
82,231 corpus weight
- Nevers
Nevers
82,230 corpus weight
- nids
nids
82,229 corpus weight
- NS
NS
82,228 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « MP3 » 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 | MP3 |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | \ɛm.pe.tʁwa\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #17,770 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « MP3 »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for MP3 is neighbouring look-alikes ("MR", "my", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced \ɛm.pe.tʁwa\. Frequency #17,770 among 5,038 “M” headwords. 4 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for MP3, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "MR", "my", "ms", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is MP3, spelled M-P-3.
Definition
- 1Norme d’encodage du son sous forme numérique.
- 2Par juxtaposition, indique un procédé ou un objet utilisant cette norme.
- 3Fichier musical compressé suivant cette norme.
- 4Lecteur de musique permettant d’écouter les fichiers à la norme MP3.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how MP3 appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le MP3 (Mpeg Audio Layer 3) a été inventé en 1987 par Thomson Multimedia et le Fraunhofer Institut en Allemagne.
Le MP3 a révolutionné le web musical.
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
How do you spell "MP3"?
What does "MP3" mean?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "MP3", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).