pat
\pat\
The verdict
“pat” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,372) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,372
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Situation où un des deux joueurs, qui n’a pas son roi en échec et qui a le trait, ne peut pas jouer sans mettre le roi en prise, et qui constitue un des cas de nullité de la partie.
Corpus desk
Index FR-pat · pat · French
pat · rank #10,372 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,372
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH passerait
Nearest frequency peer: passerait (-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 « pat »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- parier
parier
89,632 corpus weight
- partez
partez
89,631 corpus weight
- passerait
passerait
89,630 corpus weight
- pat
pat
89,629 corpus weight
- paysan
paysan
89,628 corpus weight
- peloton
peloton
89,627 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « pat » 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 | pat |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pat\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,372 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « pat »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for pat is neighbouring look-alikes ("pu", "PS", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \pat\. Frequency #10,372 among 6,826 “P” headwords. Gloss: "Situation où un des deux joueurs, qui n’a pas son roi en échec et qui a le trait, ne peut pas jouer sans mettre le roi en prise, et qui constitue un des cas de nullité de la partie.".
Zero misspellings are on record for pat in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pu", "PS", "PQ", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is pat, spelled P-A-T.
Definition
- 1Situation où un des deux joueurs, qui n’a pas son roi en échec et qui a le trait, ne peut pas jouer sans mettre le roi en prise, et qui constitue un des cas de nullité de la partie.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how pat appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
L’application sembla dissiper un moment le nuage qui couvrait le front du ministre : il venait d’avancer une tour qui mettait le roi de Louis XIII dans cette fausse position qu’on nomme Pat, situation où ce roi d’ébène, sans être attaqué personnellement, ne peut cependant ni reculer ni avancer dans aucun sens.
This word in other languages
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 "pat", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).