NATO

/\ˈnaːto\/ noun

Letters

4 characters

Frequency Rank

#60,230

in French word usage

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

NATO is aFrenchnoun. It means: OTAN (Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord). Pronounced \ˈnaːto\.

Key facts for NATO
PropertyValue
HeadwordNATO
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ˈnaːto\
Letters4
Frequency rank#60,230
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of NATO in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for NATO is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˈnaːto\. Corpus data places it at rank #60,230 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "OTAN (Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord).".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for NATO in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is NATO, spelled N-A-T-O, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    OTAN (Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord).

Synonyms

Frequency rank: #60,230 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "NATO"?
"NATO" is spelled N-A-T-O. The IPA pronunciation is \ˈnaːto\.
What does "NATO" mean?
As a noun, "NATO" means: OTAN (Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord).
How do you pronounce "NATO"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "NATO" is \ˈnaːto\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "NATO" come from?
"NATO" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter N in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.