ppm
\pe.pe.ɛm\
The verdict
“ppm” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #38,483) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #38,483
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Partie par million.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ppm · ppm · French
ppm · rank #38,483 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #38,483
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH poix
Nearest frequency peer: poix (-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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « ppm »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- plasticien
plasticien
61,521 corpus weight
- platanes
platanes
61,520 corpus weight
- poix
poix
61,519 corpus weight
- ppm
ppm
61,518 corpus weight
- pressante
pressante
61,517 corpus weight
- privations
privations
61,516 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « ppm » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
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 | ppm |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pe.pe.ɛm\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #38,483 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « ppm »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ppm is neighbouring look-alikes ("pu", "PS", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \pe.pe.ɛm\. Frequency #38,483 among 6,826 “P” headwords. Gloss: "Partie par million.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for ppm, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pu", "PS", "PQ", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is ppm, spelled P-P-M.
Definition
- 1Partie par million.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how ppm appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Si, par contre, l’intoxication est moins aiguë (teneur en Hg dans l'eau inférieure à 1 ppm), on a un effet subléthal suivi d'une adaptation de l'anguille. Lorsque la concentration en Hg dans l'eau est plus faible encore (0.01 ppm), l'effet subléthal disparaît, l'adaptation se faisant en même temps que l'accumulation du Hg.
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 "ppm", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).