são
\sˈɐ̃w\
The verdict
“são” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #20,584) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #20,584
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sain.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sao · são · French
são · rank #20,584 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #20,584
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH synthétiques
Nearest frequency peer: synthétiques (-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 « são »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- suspecté
suspecté
79,420 corpus weight
- symétrique
symétrique
79,419 corpus weight
- synthétiques
synthétiques
79,418 corpus weight
- são
são
79,417 corpus weight
- tacite
tacite
79,416 corpus weight
- tanks
tanks
79,415 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « são » 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 | são |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \sˈɐ̃w\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #20,584 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « são »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for são is neighbouring look-alikes ("se", "si", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \sˈɐ̃w\. Frequency #20,584 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Sain.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for são in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "se", "si", "st", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is são, spelled S-Ã-O.
Definition
- 1Sain.
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 "são", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).