poireau
\pwa.ʁo\
The verdict
“poireau” has 8 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #34,256. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #34,256
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 8
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Légume à feuilles longues et vertes, cultivées pour son pied blanc comestible.
Corpus desk
Index FR-poireau · poireau · French
poireau · rank #34,256 · 8 variants · 8 confusables
- FREQ-MID #34,256
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 8 pairs
- VAR-MID 8 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH poigne
Nearest frequency peer: poigne (-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 « poireau »
Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin
- Plenel
Plenel
65,748 corpus weight
- pluviales
pluviales
65,747 corpus weight
- poigne
poigne
65,746 corpus weight
- poireau
poireau
65,745 corpus weight
- poitevin
poitevin
65,743 corpus weight
- Pontiac
Pontiac
65,742 corpus weight
What this shows « poireau » 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 | poireau |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pwa.ʁo\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #34,256 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « poireau »
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 8 spelling variants around poireau (IPA \pwa.ʁo\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #34,256 among 6,826 “P” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for poireau, with forms such as "opireau", "pioreau", and "poierau". 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, "préau", "poteau", "poires", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is poireau, spelled P-O-I-R-E-A-U.
Definition
- 1Légume à feuilles longues et vertes, cultivées pour son pied blanc comestible.
- 2Médaille du Mérite agricole.
- 3Verrue, excroissance présente sur la peau des hommes ou de certains animaux.
- 4État lorsque l’on attend ; temps qui passe durant cet état.
- 5Officier général, par analogie avec le légume aux cheveux blanc et à la queue verte
- 6Pénis.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how poireau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le poireau se sème à la volée dès la fin de mars.
J’aimais les poireaux. Que voulez-vous ? — Je haïssais l’oignon, j’aimais les poireaux. On me les arrachait de la bouche, comme on arrache un pistolet des mains d’un criminel, comme on enlève la coupe de poison à un malheureux qui veut se suicider. « Pourquoi ne pourrais-je pas en manger ? demandai-je en pleurant. — Parce que tu les aimes », répondait cet…
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- opireau
- pioreau
- poierau
- poiraeu
- poireua
- poirreau
- porieau
- ppoireau
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of poireau - 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
How do you spell "poireau"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "poireau", 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 (8 here; floor ≥5).