puissance
\pɥi.sɑ̃s\
The verdict
“puissance” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #1,188 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,188
- frequency rank, French
- 9
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Pouvoir d’imposer son autorité.
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 | puissance |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pɥi.sɑ̃s\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #1,188 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “puissance” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for puissance is 9 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɥi.sɑ̃s\. Corpus data places it at rank #1,188 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 20 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 puissance, with forms such as "piussance", "ppuissance", and "puisance". 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 5 confusable-pair relationships, "puissant", "puissante", "puissants", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is puissance, spelled P-U-I-S-S-A-N-C-E.
Definition
- 1Pouvoir d’imposer son autorité.
- 2Domination, empire.
- 3État souverain.
- 4Ceux qui possèdent les premières dignités de l’État.
- 5Pouvoir de faire une chose.
- 6Force.
- 7Probabilité, potentiel, capacité d’un acteur d’imposer sa volonté à un autre.
- 8Ce qui exerce beaucoup d’empire sur l’âme ou sur l’esprit.
- 9Efficacité qu’on attribue à certains remèdes, à certaines substances. Vertu, propriété.
- 10Possibilité qui n’est pas encore réalisée.
- 11Ensemble de forces motrices, de tout ce qui imprime ou peut imprimer un mouvement.
- 12Portée d’un instrument d’optique.
- 13Quantité d’énergie ou de travail fourni, ou susceptible d’être fourni ou consommé, par unité de temps, mesurée en watts.
- 14Consommation d’un appareil électrique.
- 15Épaisseur d’une couche de minerai exploitable entre deux couches de roches.
- 16Une des hiérarchies des anges.
- 17Produit d’une quantité un nombre entier de fois par lui-même, la quantité pouvant être un nombre réel ou complexe, une indéterminée, etc.
- 18Nombre de fois qu’on multiplie une quantité par elle-même.
- 19?
- 20Concours de saut d’obstacles de quatre à six obstacles dont un mur, ou un vertical de remplacement, qui doit être l’obstacle le plus haut.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: piussance,ppuissance,puisance,puisasnce,puissacne,puissancce,puissanec,puissannce,puissnace,pusisance,upissance
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of puissance - 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 "puissance"?
What does "puissance" mean?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “puissance”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-U-I-S-S-A-N-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pɥi.sɑ̃s\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “puissant” - see the side-by-side comparison. puissance vs puissant
- 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.