reel
\ʁe.ɛl\
The verdict
“reel” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #27,593) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #27,593
- frequency rank, French
- 5,742
- “R” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Format de vidéo courte sur Instagram.
Corpus desk
Index FR-reel · reel · French
reel · rank #27,593 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #27,593
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,742
- PHOTO-FINISH reconduire
Nearest frequency peer: reconduire (-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 « reel »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- rapatrier
rapatrier
72,411 corpus weight
- ravagée
ravagée
72,410 corpus weight
- reconduire
reconduire
72,409 corpus weight
- reel
reel
72,408 corpus weight
- refaite
refaite
72,407 corpus weight
- refusés
refusés
72,406 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « reel » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
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 | reel |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʁe.ɛl\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #27,593 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « reel »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for reel is neighbouring look-alikes ("RL", "rue", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ʁe.ɛl\. Frequency #27,593 among 5,742 “R” headwords. Gloss: "Format de vidéo courte sur Instagram.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for reel, with forms such as "erel", "reell", and "rele". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "RL", "rue", "RER", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is reel, spelled R-E-E-L.
Definition
- 1Format de vidéo courte sur Instagram.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- erel
- reell
- rele
- rreel
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of reel - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 "reel"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "reel", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).