ost
\ɔst\
The verdict
“ost” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,617) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,617
- frequency rank, French
- 1,642
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - ou Armée au Moyen Âge.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ost · ost · French
ost · rank #19,617 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,617
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,642
- PHOTO-FINISH opèrent
Nearest frequency peer: opèrent (-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 « ost »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- occulte
occulte
80,387 corpus weight
- opèrent
opèrent
80,385 corpus weight
- ost
ost
80,384 corpus weight
- ouh
ouh
80,383 corpus weight
- paies
paies
80,382 corpus weight
- pansement
pansement
80,381 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « ost » 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 | ost |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɔst\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #19,617 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « ost »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ost is neighbouring look-alikes ("ou", "ow", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ɔst\. Frequency #19,617 among 1,642 “O” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for ost, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ou", "ow", "ox", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is ost, spelled O-S-T.
Definition
- 1ou Armée au Moyen Âge.
- 2Troupe mise à disposition par un vassal à son suzerain. Le roi, suzerain suprême, peut lever l'Ost pour affronter une menace extérieure.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ost appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
La bannière qui conduisait jadis les cent lances du baron Palamède de Sigognac contre l’ost des Sarrasins.
Personne, au temps de saint Louis, n’aurait eu l’idée d’envoyer à la bataille un homme de savoir et d’entendement. Et l’on n’arrachait pas non plus le laboureur à la glèbe pour le mener à l’ost. Maintenant, on fait un devoir à un pauvre paysan d’être soldat.
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 "ost", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).