sei
\zaɪ̯\
The verdict
“sei” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #36,154) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #36,154
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de sein.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sei · sei · French
sei · rank #36,154 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #36,154
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH sauveurs
Nearest frequency peer: sauveurs (-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 « sei »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- saunier
saunier
63,849 corpus weight
- sauveurs
sauveurs
63,848 corpus weight
- sei
sei
63,847 corpus weight
- sembla
sembla
63,846 corpus weight
- send
send
63,845 corpus weight
- sentimental…
sentimentales
63,844 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « sei » 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 | sei |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \zaɪ̯\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #36,154 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « sei »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for sei is neighbouring look-alikes ("si", "st", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced \zaɪ̯\. Frequency #36,154 among 6,032 “S” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No generated misspelling entries exist for sei in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "si", "st", "su", 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 any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is sei, spelled S-E-I.
Definition
- 1Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de sein.
- 2Première personne du singulier du subjonctif présent I de sein.
- 3Troisième personne du singulier du subjonctif présent I de sein.
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 "sei"?
What does "sei" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "sei"?
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What language does "sei" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "sei", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).