nie
\ni\
The verdict
“nie” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #8,277) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #8,277
- frequency rank, French
- 1,563
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de nier.
Corpus desk
Index FR-nie · nie · French
nie · rank #8,277 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #8,277
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,563
- PHOTO-FINISH molécules
Nearest frequency peer: molécules (-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 « nie »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- miles
miles
91,727 corpus weight
- module
module
91,726 corpus weight
- molécules
molécules
91,725 corpus weight
- nie
nie
91,724 corpus weight
- now
now
91,723 corpus weight
- ordi
ordi
91,722 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « nie » 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 | nie |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ni\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #8,277 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « nie »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for nie is neighbouring look-alikes ("no", "nu", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced \ni\. Frequency #8,277 among 1,563 “N” headwords. 5 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
nie doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "no", "nu", "ny", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is nie, spelled N-I-E.
Definition
- 1Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de nier.
- 2Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de nier.
- 3Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de nier.
- 4Troisième personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de nier.
- 5Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif de nier.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how nie appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Parlant de l’espace rationnel, « cartésien » de Le Corbusier, espace qui nie les accidents de terrain, le relief singulier de chaque sol, de chaque lieu naturel, Ph. Boudon écrit : « Il faut attacher de l’importance à ce signe de la modernité, le pilotis, qui manifeste la volonté délibérée de décoller l’architecture du sol, donc du lieu, et par là de l’ut…
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 "nie", not the corpus desk frequency band.