nec
\ˈnek\
The verdict
“nec” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #27,146) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #27,146
- frequency rank, French
- 1,563
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Et ne pas, ni, non plus, mais… ne pas.
Corpus desk
Index FR-nec · nec · French
nec · rank #27,146 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #27,146
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,563
- PHOTO-FINISH Natasha
Nearest frequency peer: Natasha (-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 « nec »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- nacelle
nacelle
72,858 corpus weight
- naguère
naguère
72,857 corpus weight
- Natasha
Natasha
72,856 corpus weight
- nec
nec
72,855 corpus weight
- Ney
Ney
72,854 corpus weight
- nichons
nichons
72,853 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « nec » 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 | nec |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \ˈnek\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #27,146 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « nec »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for nec is neighbouring look-alikes ("ni", "no", …), not just typos; it is anadverb pronounced \ˈnek\. Frequency #27,146 among 1,563 “N” headwords. Gloss: "Et ne pas, ni, non plus, mais… ne pas.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for nec, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ni", "no", "nu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is nec, spelled N-E-C.
Definition
- 1Et ne pas, ni, non plus, mais… ne pas.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how nec appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Fluctuat nec mergitur.
Nec plus ultra.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "nec", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).