pain

/\pɛ̃\/ noun

Letters

4 characters

Frequency Rank

#1,925

in French word usage

Misspellings

5

tracked variants

Confusables

20

similar word pairs

pain is aFrenchnoun. It means: Pâte cuite au four, à base de farine, d’eau et de levure de boulanger ou de levain. Pronounced \pɛ̃\. It ranks #1,925 in French word frequency. Often confused with pi and PN.

Key facts for pain
PropertyValue
Headwordpain
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\pɛ̃\
Letters4
Frequency rank#1,925
Misspellings tracked5
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of pain in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for pain is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɛ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #1,925 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for pain, with forms such as "apin", "painn", and "pani". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pi", "PN", "pas", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

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. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is pain, spelled P-A-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Pâte cuite au four, à base de farine, d’eau et de levure de boulanger ou de levain.
  2. 2
    Morceau de pain considéré en tant qu’unité de cuisson ou de vente, en général sous une forme définie : une baguette de pain, un pain de campagne, un pain azyme, …
  3. 3
    Baguette de 400 grammes (le terme baguette étant dans ce cas réservé à la baguette de 250 grammes).
  4. 4
    Tout objet qui prend la forme d’un pain.
  5. 5
    Nourriture, moyens de subsistance.
  6. 6
    Coup de poing.
  7. 7
    Erreur grossière, fausse note, couac.
  8. 8
    Jour de prison.
  9. 9
    Crush, personne pour qui on a une attirance.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: apin,painn,pani,pian,ppain

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for pain

Misspelling Variants of "pain"

apin4painn5pani4pian4ppain5
Misspelling Variants of "pain"

Frequency rank: #1,925 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "pain"?
"pain" is spelled P-A-I-N. The IPA pronunciation is \pɛ̃\.
What does "pain" mean?
As a noun, "pain" means: Pâte cuite au four, à base de farine, d’eau et de levure de boulanger ou de levain.
What words are commonly confused with "pain"?
"pain" is commonly confused with "pi", "PN", "pas". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "pain"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "pain" is \pɛ̃\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "pain" come from?
"pain" 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.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.