pa
\pa\
The verdict
“pa” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #6,725) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #6,725
- frequency rank, French
- 248,534
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Dans les batteries du tambour, coup frappé sur la caisse en appuyant fortement avec la baguette que l’on tient de la main gauche.
Corpus desk
Index FR-pa · pa · French
pa · rank #6,725 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #6,725
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 248,534
- PHOTO-FINISH ouvrent
Nearest frequency peer: ouvrent (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “pa”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- opposant
opposant
93,279 corpus weight
- ouvertement
ouvertement
93,278 corpus weight
- ouvrent
ouvrent
93,277 corpus weight
- pa
pa
93,276 corpus weight
- pan
pan
93,275 corpus weight
- Pauline
Pauline
93,274 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “pa” sits against the nearest ranked French headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | pa |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pa\ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #6,725 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pa” sits in French frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for pa is neighbouring look-alikes ("pu", "PS", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \pa\. Frequency #6,725 among 248,534 “P” headwords. Gloss: "Dans les batteries du tambour, coup frappé sur la caisse en appuyant fortement avec la baguette que l’on tient de la main gauche.".
pa doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pu", "PS", "PQ", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is pa, spelled P-A.
Definition
- 1Dans les batteries du tambour, coup frappé sur la caisse en appuyant fortement avec la baguette que l’on tient de la main gauche.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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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.