oas
\ˈwas\
The verdict
“oas” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #31,154 in French word frequency and used as a verb.
- #31,154
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Deuxième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif du verbe bezañ (« être »).
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 | oas |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ˈwas\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #31,154 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “oas” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for oas is 3 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˈwas\. Corpus data places it at rank #31,154 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Deuxième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif du verbe bezañ (« être »).".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for oas, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "on", "ou", "or", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is oas, spelled O-A-S.
Definition
- 1Deuxième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif du verbe bezañ (« être »).
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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Using “oas”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-A-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ˈwas\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “on” - see the side-by-side comparison. oas vs on
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.