sabotage

\sa.bɔ.taʒ\

/\sa.bɔ.taʒ\/ noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“sabotage” has 11 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #18,589. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#18,589
frequency rank, French
6,032
“S” headwords
11
tracked misspellings
1
confusable pair

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Action de saboter, de détruire le travail d’autrui délibérément.

Corpus desk

Index FR-sabotage · sabotage · French

sabotage · rank #18,589 · 11 variants · 1 confusable

  • FREQ-MID #18,589
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-LOW 1 pairs
  • VAR-MID 11 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,032
  • PHOTO-FINISH réélection

Nearest frequency peer: réélection (-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.

Pairs de rang près de l'aimant d'erreurs « sabotage »

Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin

corpus weight

What this shows « sabotage » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.

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).

sabotage vs saboté
63% similar

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

Key facts for sabotage
PropertyValue
Headwordsabotage
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\sa.bɔ.taʒ\
Letters8
Frequency rank#18,589
Misspellings tracked11
Confusable pairs1
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « sabotage »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).sabotagese 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 « réélection » (#18,588), « safran » (#18,590), « résolus » (#18,587). Parmi 6,032 lemmes en « S », « sabotage » est au #18,589. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 11 spelling variants around sabotage (IPA \sa.bɔ.taʒ\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #18,589 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for sabotage, with forms such as "asbotage", "sabbotage", and "saboatge". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "saboté", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is sabotage, spelled S-A-B-O-T-A-G-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Action de saboter, de détruire le travail d’autrui délibérément.
  2. 2
    Fabrication des sabots (chaussures).
  3. 3
    Bruit que font sur le sol les sabots d'une personne qui marche.
  4. 4
    Opération sur les traverses de chemin de fer consistant à y percer une encoche pour y loger le patin (coussinet) du rail.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Un ministre souhaitant rester anonyme a indiqué au Guardian qu'ils étaient très préoccupés par «les actes de sabotage organisés, financés et réalisés par des “proxys” [intermédiaires] russes».
  2. […] même le sabotage des ouvriers quand ils traversaient d’un pas traîné un chemin pavé, rien ne se confondait pour lui, et de tout il se rendait un compte exact, qui lui permettait de savoir ce qui se faisait, et avec quelle activité ou quelle nonchalance cela se faisait.

This word in other languages

sabotage(English)sabotaje(Español)Sabotage(Deutsch)sabotagem(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • asbotage
  • sabbotage
  • saboatge
  • sabotaeg
  • sabotagge
  • sabotgae
  • sabottage
  • sabtoage
  • saobtage
  • sbaotage
  • ssabotage

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sabotage - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.

asbotage2sabbotage1saboatge2sabotaeg2sabotagge1sabotgae2sabottage1sabtoage2
Edit distance from "sabotage"

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 "sabotage"?
"sabotage" is spelled S-A-B-O-T-A-G-E. The IPA pronunciation is \sa.bɔ.taʒ\.
What does "sabotage" mean?
As a noun, "sabotage" means: Action de saboter, de détruire le travail d’autrui délibérément.
What words are commonly confused with "sabotage"?
"sabotage" is commonly confused with "saboté". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "sabotage"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "sabotage" is \sa.bɔ.taʒ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "sabotage" come from?
"sabotage" 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 "sabotage", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

sanglant#18,592tonalité#18,608prologue#18,566unissent#18,616

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (11 here; floor ≥5).

résolus11 variantsréglage11 variantsThomson11 variantsprélude11 variants

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list