ont
\ɔ̃\
The verdict
“ont” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #61) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #61
- frequency rank, French
- 1,642
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe avoir.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ont · ont · French
ont · rank #61 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #61
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,642
- PHOTO-FINISH me
Nearest frequency peer: me (-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 « ont »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- aux
aux
99,943 corpus weight
- me
me
99,941 corpus weight
- ont
ont
99,940 corpus weight
- T
T
99,939 corpus weight
- M
M
99,938 corpus weight
- était
était
99,937 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « ont » 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 | ont |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ɔ̃\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #61 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « ont »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ont is neighbouring look-alikes ("ou", "or", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced \ɔ̃\. Frequency #61 among 1,642 “O” headwords. Gloss: "Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe avoir.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for ont, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ou", "or", "os", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is ont, spelled O-N-T.
Definition
- 1Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe avoir.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how ont appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Les jeunes femmes ont un sens aigu de ce qu’il convient de faire et de ne pas faire quand on a cessé d’être jeune. « Je ne comprends pas, disent-elles, que passé quarante ans on se teigne en blond ; qu’on s’exhibe en bikini ; qu’on coquette avec les hommes. Moi, quand j’aurai cet âge-là… »
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 "ont", not the corpus desk frequency band.