profane

\pʁɔ.fan\

/\pʁɔ.fan\/ adj

The verdict

“profane” has 10 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #22,378. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#22,378
frequency rank, French
6,826
“P” headwords
10
tracked misspellings
13
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui n’appartient pas à la religion, par opposition à ce qui la concerne.

Corpus desk

Index FR-profane · profane · French

profane · rank #22,378 · 10 variants · 13 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #22,378
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-MID 13 pairs
  • VAR-MID 10 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,826
  • PHOTO-FINISH pourcentages

Nearest frequency peer: pourcentages (-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 « profane »

Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin

corpus weight

What this shows « profane » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

profane vs prône
57% similar
profane vs profond
71% similar
profane vs profité
57% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for profane
PropertyValue
Headwordprofane
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdjective
IPA\pʁɔ.fan\
Letters7
Frequency rank#22,378
Misspellings tracked10
Confusable pairs13
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « profane »

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.profanese place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « pourcentages » (#22,377), « protagoniste » (#22,379), « policy » (#22,376). Parmi 6,826 lemmes en « P », « profane » est au #22,378. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 10 spelling variants around profane (IPA \pʁɔ.fan\), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #22,378 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 profane, with forms such as "porfane", "pprofane", and "prfoane". 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 13 confusable-pair relationships, "prône", "profond", "profité", 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 its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is profane, spelled P-R-O-F-A-N-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Qui n’appartient pas à la religion, par opposition à ce qui la concerne.
  2. 2
    Qui va contre le respect qu’on doit aux choses sacrées.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how profane appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Mais le seul nom qui ait été sauvé de l'oubli, dans la poésie profane, est celui de ce médiocre rimeur de Mathieu-le-Juif, d'Arras, qui vivait au XIIIe siècle […].
  2. C’est une action profane et impie.

Synonyms

Antonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • porfane
  • pprofane
  • prfoane
  • proafne
  • profaen
  • profanne
  • proffane
  • profnae
  • prrofane
  • rpofane

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of profane - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.

porfane2pprofane1prfoane2proafne2profaen2profanne1proffane1profnae2
Edit distance from "profane"

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 "profane"?
"profane" is spelled P-R-O-F-A-N-E. The IPA pronunciation is \pʁɔ.fan\.
What does "profane" mean?
As an adjective, "profane" means: Qui n’appartient pas à la religion, par opposition à ce qui la concerne.
What words are commonly confused with "profane"?
"profane" is commonly confused with "prône", "profond", "profité". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "profane"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "profane" is \pʁɔ.fan\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "profane" come from?
"profane" is a French word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
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.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "profane", 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).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list