new
\ˈnu\
The verdict
“new” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #742) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #742
- frequency rank, French
- 1,563
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Nouveau, récemment apparu.
Corpus desk
Index FR-new · new · French
new · rank #742 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #742
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,563
- PHOTO-FINISH mariage
Nearest frequency peer: mariage (-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 « new »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- espace
espace
99,262 corpus weight
- liberté
liberté
99,261 corpus weight
- mariage
mariage
99,260 corpus weight
- new
new
99,259 corpus weight
- organisation
organisation
99,258 corpus weight
- passage
passage
99,257 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « new » 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 | new |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ˈnu\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #742 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « new »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for new is neighbouring look-alikes ("ni", "no", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \ˈnu\. Frequency #742 among 1,563 “N” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for new, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ni", "no", "nu", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
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 new, spelled N-E-W.
Definition
- 1Nouveau, récemment apparu.
- 2Nouveau, par opposition au précédent.
- 3Neuf, pas usé.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how new appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It’s a new game.
My new car is much better than my previous one.
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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What does "new" mean?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "new", not the corpus desk frequency band.