okapi
\ɔ.ka.pi\
The verdict
“okapi” is uncommon French (frequency #54,767 among 75,470 “O” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,767
- frequency rank, French
- 75,470
- “O” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Espèce de ruminant des forêts équatoriales de l’Afrique centrale, de la même famille que la girafe, plus petit et qui a des zébrures noires et blanches sur les pattes et l’arrière train.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | okapi |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɔ.ka.pi\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #54,767 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “okapi” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
okapi is uncommon French at frequency #54,767 among 75,470 “O” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ɔ.ka.pi\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Espèce de ruminant des forêts équatoriales de l’Afrique centrale, de la même famille que la girafe, plus petit et qui a des zébrures noires et blanches sur les pattes et l’arrière train.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for okapi, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is okapi, spelled O-K-A-P-I.
Definition
- 1Espèce de ruminant des forêts équatoriales de l’Afrique centrale, de la même famille que la girafe, plus petit et qui a des zébrures noires et blanches sur les pattes et l’arrière train.
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
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Using “okapi”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-K-A-P-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ɔ.ka.pi\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
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.