secours
\sə.kuʁ\
The verdict
“secours” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #1,889 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,889
- frequency rank, French
- 7
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 13
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Aide, assistance dans le danger, dans le besoin.
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 | secours |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \sə.kuʁ\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,889 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 13 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “secours” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for secours is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \sə.kuʁ\. Corpus data places it at rank #1,889 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for secours, with forms such as "escours", "sceours", and "seccours". 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 13 confusable-pair relationships, "séjour", "secure", "séjours", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is secours, spelled S-E-C-O-U-R-S.
Definition
- 1Aide, assistance dans le danger, dans le besoin.
- 2Aide des troupes qu’on envoie ou qui viennent secourir, seconder ceux qui sont trop faibles pour résister avec avantage à l’ennemi.
- 3Organisation charitable dont l’objet est d’aider les personnes en danger, dans le besoin.
- 4Ensemble des intervenants en cas d'urgence.
- 5Succursale d'une paroisse.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: escours,sceours,seccours,secorus,secourrs,secourss,secousr,secuors,seocurs,ssecours
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of secours - 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 "secours"?
What does "secours" mean?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “secours”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is S-E-C-O-U-R-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \sə.kuʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “séjour” - see the side-by-side comparison. secours vs séjour
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.