reef
\ɹiːf\
The verdict
“reef” is uncommon French (frequency #55,554 among 5,742 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #55,554
- frequency rank, French
- 5,742
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Écueil, récif.
Corpus desk
Index FR-reef · reef · French
reef · rank #55,554 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #55,554
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,742
- PHOTO-FINISH recula
Nearest frequency peer: recula (-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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « reef »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- recommander…
recommanderais
44,450 corpus weight
- recommencez
recommencez
44,449 corpus weight
- recula
recula
44,448 corpus weight
- reef
reef
44,447 corpus weight
- refinanceme…
refinancement
44,446 corpus weight
- reformulati…
reformulation
44,445 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « reef » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | reef |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɹiːf\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #55,554 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « reef » en français
Rare enough to double-check
reef is uncommon French at frequency #55,554 among 5,742 “R” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ɹiːf\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Écueil, récif.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for reef, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 reef, spelled R-E-E-F.
Definition
- 1Écueil, récif.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how reef appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
A ‘spectacular’ series of cold-water coral reefs have been found off the west coast of Ireland.
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 "reef", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).