owl
[aʊl]
The verdict
“owl” is uncommon French (frequency #66,969 among 75,470 “O” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #66,969
- frequency rank, French
- 75,470
- “O” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Strigidé; hibou ou chouette.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | owl |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [aʊl] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #66,969 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “owl” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
owl is uncommon French at frequency #66,969 among 75,470 “O” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed [aʊl]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Strigidé; hibou ou chouette.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for owl, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 owl, spelled O-W-L.
Definition
- 1Strigidé; hibou ou chouette.
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 “owl”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-W-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [aʊl] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
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.