piètre
\pjɛtʁ\
The verdict
“piètre” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #18,828 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #18,828
- frequency rank, French
- 6
- letters
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Qui est mesquin, chétif ou insignifiant.
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 | piètre |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \pjɛtʁ\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #18,828 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “piètre” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for piètre is 6 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pjɛtʁ\. Corpus data places it at rank #18,828 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Qui est mesquin, chétif ou insignifiant.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for piètre, with forms such as "ipètre", "pietre", and "pitère". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pire", "piste", "pitié", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No documented word history exists 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 piètre, spelled P-I-È-T-R-E.
Definition
- 1Qui est mesquin, chétif ou insignifiant.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ipètre,pietre,pitère,pièrte,pièter,piètrre,pièttre,ppiètre,pèitre
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of piètre - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
How do you spell "piètre"?
What does "piètre" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "piètre"?
How do you pronounce "piètre"?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “piètre”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-I-È-T-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pjɛtʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pire” - see the side-by-side comparison. piètre vs pire
- 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.