portant
\pɔʁ.tɑ̃\
The verdict
“portant” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #2,009 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #2,009
- frequency rank, French
- 7
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Qui porte, dans les différents sens du verbe porter.
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 | portant |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \pɔʁ.tɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #2,009 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “portant” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for portant is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɔʁ.tɑ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #2,009 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for portant, with forms such as "oprtant", "poratnt", and "porrtant". 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, "posant", "priant", "pouvant", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
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 portant, spelled P-O-R-T-A-N-T.
Definition
- 1Qui porte, dans les différents sens du verbe porter.
- 2(Lorsqu’il est employé avec les adverbes bien et mal) Qui est en bonne ou en mauvaise santé. → voir bien-portant et mal-portant
- 3Pleine, à l’état de grossesse en parlant des animaux.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: oprtant,poratnt,porrtant,portannt,portantt,portatn,portnat,porttant,potrant,pportant,protant
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of portant - 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
How do you spell "portant"?
What does "portant" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "portant"?
How do you pronounce "portant"?
What language does "portant" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “portant”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-O-R-T-A-N-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pɔʁ.tɑ̃\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “posant” - see the side-by-side comparison. portant vs posant
- 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.