patients
\pa.sjɑ̃\
The verdict
“patients” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #2,534 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #2,534
- frequency rank, French
- 8
- letters
- 12
- tracked misspellings
- 10
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Masculin pluriel de patient.
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 | patients |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \pa.sjɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #2,534 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 10 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “patients” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for patients is 8 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pa.sjɑ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #2,534 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Masculin pluriel de patient.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for patients, with forms such as "aptients", "paitents", and "pateints". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 10 confusable-pair relationships, "patins", "paient", "païens", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 patients, spelled P-A-T-I-E-N-T-S.
Definition
- 1Masculin pluriel de patient.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: aptients,paitents,pateints,patiennts,patienst,patientss,patientts,patietns,patinets,pattients,ppatients,ptaients
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of patients - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 “patients”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-A-T-I-E-N-T-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pa.sjɑ̃\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “patins” - see the side-by-side comparison. patients vs patins
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
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.