niveau

/\ni.vo\/ noun

Letters

6 characters

Frequency Rank

#317

in French word usage

Misspellings

7

tracked variants

Confusables

4

similar word pairs

niveau is aFrenchnoun. It means: Outil servant à vérifier l’horizontalité d’une surface, d’un sol. Pronounced \ni.vo\. It ranks #317 in French word frequency. Often confused with nouveau and niveaux.

Key facts for niveau
PropertyValue
Headwordniveau
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ni.vo\
Letters6
Frequency rank#317
Misspellings tracked7
Confusable pairs4
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

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

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for niveau is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ni.vo\. Corpus data places it at rank #317 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for niveau, with forms such as "inveau", "nievau", and "nivaeu". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "nouveau", "niveaux", "neveu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

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 niveau, spelled N-I-V-E-A-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Outil servant à vérifier l’horizontalité d’une surface, d’un sol.
  2. 2
    Degré d’élévation par rapport à un plan horizontal.
  3. 3
    Degré de remplissage d'un réservoir.
  4. 4
    Degré d'évolution.
  5. 5
    Degré de compétence ou de capacité.
  6. 6
    Étage.
  7. 7
    Étape d’un jeu vidéo.
  8. 8
    Niveau d’énergie.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: inveau,nievau,nivaeu,niveua,nivveau,nniveau,nvieau

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for niveau

Misspelling Variants of "niveau"

inveau6nievau6nivaeu6niveua6nivveau7nniveau7nvieau6
Misspelling Variants of "niveau"

Frequency rank: #317 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "niveau"?
"niveau" is spelled N-I-V-E-A-U. The IPA pronunciation is \ni.vo\.
What does "niveau" mean?
As a noun, "niveau" means: Outil servant à vérifier l’horizontalité d’une surface, d’un sol.
What words are commonly confused with "niveau"?
"niveau" is commonly confused with "nouveau", "niveaux", "neveu". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "niveau"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "niveau" is \ni.vo\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "niveau" come from?
"niveau" 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.