nul
\nyl\
The verdict
“nul” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,417) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,417
- frequency rank, French
- 1,563
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Égal à zéro, en parlant d’un nombre, d’une grandeur ou d’une valeur.
Corpus desk
Index FR-nul · nul · French
nul · rank #1,417 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,417
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,563
- PHOTO-FINISH perte
Nearest frequency peer: perte (+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 « nul »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- jeudi
jeudi
98,587 corpus weight
- journaliste
journaliste
98,586 corpus weight
- nul
nul
98,584 corpus weight
- perte
perte
98,583 corpus weight
- possibilité
possibilité
98,582 corpus weight
- riche
riche
98,581 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « nul » 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 | nul |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \nyl\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,417 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « nul »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for nul is neighbouring look-alikes ("ny", "nus", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \nyl\. Frequency #1,417 among 1,563 “N” headwords. 5 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
nul doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ny", "nus", "nuls", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is nul, spelled N-U-L.
Definition
- 1Égal à zéro, en parlant d’un nombre, d’une grandeur ou d’une valeur.
- 2Égal à zéro, en parlant d’un nombre, d’une grandeur ou d’une valeur.
- 3Qui est sans valeur, sans effet, qui se réduit à rien.
- 4Il se dit des actes qui, étant contraires aux lois, pour le fond ou dans la forme, sont comme s’ils n’étaient pas, et ne peuvent avoir leur effet.
- 5Mauvais, de mauvaise qualité, sans intérêt, qui ne vaut rien.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how nul appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La charge d'un neutron est nulle.
Deux vecteurs nuls ont une somme nulle.
This word in other languages
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
How do you spell "nul"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "nul", not the corpus desk frequency band.