ose

\oz\

/\oz\/ noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“ose” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #3,950) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#3,950
frequency rank, French
1,642
“O” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Nom générique donné aux substances organiques non hydrolysables possédant un groupe réducteur, aldéhyde ou cétone, et plus de deux fonctions alcooliques. On les divise en trioses, tétroses, pentose...

Corpus desk

Index FR-ose · ose · French

ose · rank #3,950 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #3,950
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 1,642
  • PHOTO-FINISH partisans

Nearest frequency peer: partisans (+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 « ose »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « ose » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

ose vs ou
33% similar
ose vs ow
33% similar
ose vs ox
33% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for ose
PropertyValue
Headwordose
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\oz\
Letters3
Frequency rank#3,950
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « ose »

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.osese place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « partisans » (#3,951), « occupation » (#3,948), « peintre » (#3,952). Parmi 1,642 lemmes en « O », « ose » est au #3,950. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for ose is neighbouring look-alikes ("ou", "ow", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \oz\. Frequency #3,950 among 1,642 “O” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for ose, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ou", "ow", "ox", 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 spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is ose, spelled O-S-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Nom générique donné aux substances organiques non hydrolysables possédant un groupe réducteur, aldéhyde ou cétone, et plus de deux fonctions alcooliques. On les divise en trioses, tétroses, pentoses, hexoses et heptoses… suivant qu’ils renferment 3, 4, 5, 6 ou 7… atomes de carbone. On les distingue aussi en aldoses et cétoses suivant qu’ils ont des fonctions aldéhydes ou cétoniques.
  2. 2
    Composé chimique de formule brute générale CₙH₂ₙOₙ, formé d’une chaîne d’atomes de carbone portant chacun une fonction alcool (-OH), sauf un qui porte une fonction carbonyle (-CO-).

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how ose appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Ce sont des triglucosides d’aglycones (acide médicagénique, hédéragénine et de leurs dérivés), la fixation des oses se faisant sur le carbone 3 (…).
  2. Les deux oses les plus connus sont le glucose et le fructose.

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 "ose"?
"ose" is spelled O-S-E. The IPA pronunciation is \oz\.
What does "ose" mean?
As a noun, "ose" means: Nom générique donné aux substances organiques non hydrolysables possédant un groupe réducteur, aldéhyde ou cétone, et plus de deux fonctions alcooliques. On les divise en trioses, tétroses, pentose...
What words are commonly confused with "ose"?
"ose" is commonly confused with "ou", "ow", "ox". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "ose"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "ose" is \oz\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "ose" come from?
"ose" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "ose", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

pot#3,954ile#3,925der#3,909out#4,007

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list