orb
\ɔɹb\
The verdict
“orb” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #44,077) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #44,077
- frequency rank, French
- 1,642
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Orbe.
Corpus desk
Index FR-orb · orb · French
orb · rank #44,077 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #44,077
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,642
- PHOTO-FINISH ones
Nearest frequency peer: ones (-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 « orb »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- officialisa…
officialisation
55,928 corpus weight
- ones
ones
55,925 corpus weight
- orb
orb
55,924 corpus weight
- osciller
osciller
55,923 corpus weight
- othello
othello
55,922 corpus weight
- OUA
OUA
55,921 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « orb » 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 | orb |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɔɹb\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #44,077 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « orb »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for orb is neighbouring look-alikes ("ou", "os", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ɔɹb\. Frequency #44,077 among 1,642 “O” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for orb in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ou", "os", "ow", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is orb, spelled O-R-B.
Definition
- 1Orbe.
- 2Orbe (globe royale).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how orb appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Then he remembered that it was about the time of the new moon, and if that tricksy orb was in one of its stages of visibility it had set long before.
In England, when a king and queen are crowned together, only the king receives an orb.
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 "orb", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).