proper
\ˈpʁɔpɐ\
The verdict
“proper” is uncommon French (frequency #79,643 among 248,534 “P” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #79,643
- frequency rank, French
- 248,534
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Propre.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | proper |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ˈpʁɔpɐ\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #79,643 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “proper” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
proper is uncommon French at frequency #79,643 among 248,534 “P” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \ˈpʁɔpɐ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Propre.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for proper, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
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. The correct French form is proper, spelled P-R-O-P-E-R.
Definition
- 1Propre.
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 "proper"?
What does "proper" mean?
How do you pronounce "proper"?
What language does "proper" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “proper”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-R-O-P-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ˈpʁɔpɐ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
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.