rap

\ʁap\

/\ʁap\/ noun

The verdict

“rap” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,913) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#5,913
frequency rank, French
5,742
“R” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Style de chanson appartenant au mouvement culturel hip-hop apparu au début des années 1970 aux États-Unis.

Corpus desk

Index FR-rap · rap · French

rap · rank #5,913 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #5,913
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,742
  • PHOTO-FINISH racine

Nearest frequency peer: racine (-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 « rap »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « rap » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

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).

rap vs Re
0% similar
rap vs Rh
0% similar
rap vs RT
0% similar

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

Key facts for rap
PropertyValue
Headwordrap
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ʁap\
Letters3
Frequency rank#5,913
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « rap »

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.rapse 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 « racine » (#5,912), « refusent » (#5,915), « prêter » (#5,910). Parmi 5,742 lemmes en « R », « rap » est au #5,913. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for rap is neighbouring look-alikes ("Re", "Rh", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ʁap\. Frequency #5,913 among 5,742 “R” headwords. Gloss: "Style de chanson appartenant au mouvement culturel hip-hop apparu au début des années 1970 aux États-Unis.".

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for rap, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Re", "Rh", "RT", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 rap, spelled R-A-P.

Definition

  1. 1
    Style de chanson appartenant au mouvement culturel hip-hop apparu au début des années 1970 aux États-Unis.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Totalement incapable de respecter une mélodie, il ânonnait une sorte de rap qui ne tombait jamais en place et qui soit n’arrivait pas au bout, soit dépassait le nombre de mesures prévu.
  2. Faisant preuve d’une maturité certaine, il colore ses titres de rap ou de musette.

This word in other languages

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 "rap"?
"rap" is spelled R-A-P. The IPA pronunciation is \ʁap\.
What does "rap" mean?
As a noun, "rap" means: Style de chanson appartenant au mouvement culturel hip-hop apparu au début des années 1970 aux États-Unis.
What words are commonly confused with "rap"?
"rap" is commonly confused with "Re", "Rh", "RT". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "rap"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "rap" is \ʁap\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "rap" come from?
"rap" 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 "rap", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list