placebo
\pla.se.bo\
The verdict
“placebo” has 10 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #22,032. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #22,032
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 8
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Imitation de médicament sans principe actif, utilisée pour les tests en double aveugle ou pour son effet sur le psychisme de certains patients.
Corpus desk
Index FR-placebo · placebo · French
placebo · rank #22,032 · 10 variants · 8 confusables
- FREQ-MID #22,032
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 8 pairs
- VAR-MID 10 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH piquant
Nearest frequency peer: piquant (-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.
Pairs de rang près de l'aimant d'erreurs « placebo »
Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin
- Person
Person
77,972 corpus weight
- personnalis…
personnalisée
77,971 corpus weight
- piquant
piquant
77,970 corpus weight
- placebo
placebo
77,969 corpus weight
- plongeant
plongeant
77,968 corpus weight
- pléiade
pléiade
77,967 corpus weight
What this shows « placebo » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.
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 | placebo |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pla.se.bo\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #22,032 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « placebo »
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 10 spelling variants around placebo (IPA \pla.se.bo\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #22,032 among 6,826 “P” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for placebo, with forms such as "lpacebo", "palcebo", and "placbeo". 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 8 confusable-pair relationships, "placer", "placée", "placés", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is placebo, spelled P-L-A-C-E-B-O.
Definition
- 1Imitation de médicament sans principe actif, utilisée pour les tests en double aveugle ou pour son effet sur le psychisme de certains patients.
- 2Toutes formes d'ersatz.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how placebo appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Elle tentait de me faire entendre que je ne devais pas devenir dépendant, on me donnait des calmants sans effet, des placebos que je déjouais comme tels, tout entier mobilisé dans l’attente du retour de l’extase, de l’heure bénie de ma drogue.
"Environ la moitié des participants ont reçu les deux doses du vaccin, et l’autre moitié, un placebo. Ensuite, on a laissé les gens retourner à la communauté" et vaquer à leurs occupations en étant possiblement exposés au virus.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- lpacebo
- palcebo
- placbeo
- placcebo
- placebbo
- placeob
- plaecbo
- plcaebo
- pllacebo
- pplacebo
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of placebo - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "placebo", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (10 here; floor ≥5).