police

/\pɔ.lis\/ noun

Letters

6 characters

Frequency Rank

#469

in French word usage

Misspellings

8

tracked variants

Confusables

20

similar word pairs

police is aFrenchnoun. It means: Ordre, règlement établi dans un État, dans une ville, pour tout ce qui regarde la sûreté, la tranquillité et la commodité des citoyens, des habitants. Pronounced \pɔ.lis\. It ranks #469 in French word frequency. Often confused with pouce and price.

Key facts for police
PropertyValue
Headwordpolice
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\pɔ.lis\
Letters6
Frequency rank#469
Misspellings tracked8
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of police in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for police is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɔ.lis\. Corpus data places it at rank #469 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for police, with forms such as "oplice", "ploice", and "poilce". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pouce", "price", "polie", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is police, spelled P-O-L-I-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Ordre, règlement établi dans un État, dans une ville, pour tout ce qui regarde la sûreté, la tranquillité et la commodité des citoyens, des habitants.
  2. 2
    Administration qui exerce cette police.
  3. 3
    Ordre ou règlement établi dans quelque assemblée, dans quelque société que ce soit.
  4. 4
    Agent de police, policier.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: oplice,ploice,poilce,polcie,policce,poliec,pollice,ppolice

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for police

Misspelling Variants of "police"

oplice6ploice6poilce6polcie6policce7poliec6pollice7ppolice7
Misspelling Variants of "police"

Frequency rank: #469 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "police"?
"police" is spelled P-O-L-I-C-E. The IPA pronunciation is \pɔ.lis\.
What does "police" mean?
As a noun, "police" means: Ordre, règlement établi dans un État, dans une ville, pour tout ce qui regarde la sûreté, la tranquillité et la commodité des citoyens, des habitants.
What words are commonly confused with "police"?
"police" is commonly confused with "pouce", "price", "polie". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "police"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "police" is \pɔ.lis\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "police" come from?
"police" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.