osm
\ɔsm̥\
The verdict
“osm” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #41,435 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #41,435
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Osmium.
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 | osm |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɔsm̥\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #41,435 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “osm” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for osm is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɔsm̥\. Corpus data places it at rank #41,435 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Osmium.".
osm doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is osm, spelled O-S-M.
Definition
- 1Osmium.
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 “osm”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-S-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ɔsm̥\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ou” - see the side-by-side comparison. osm vs ou
- 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.