serf
\sɛʁf\
The verdict
“serf” is uncommon French (frequency #56,263 among 6,032 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #56,263
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Homme attachés au domaine qu’ils cultivent moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.
Corpus desk
Index FR-serf · serf · French
serf · rank #56,263 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #56,263
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH sentiez
Nearest frequency peer: sentiez (-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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « serf »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- seas
seas
43,741 corpus weight
- senties
senties
43,740 corpus weight
- sentiez
sentiez
43,739 corpus weight
- serf
serf
43,738 corpus weight
- sextoys
sextoys
43,737 corpus weight
- Shelton
Shelton
43,736 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « serf » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | serf |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \sɛʁf\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #56,263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « serf » en français
Rare enough to double-check
serf is uncommon French at frequency #56,263 among 6,032 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \sɛʁf\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Homme attachés au domaine qu’ils cultivent moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.".
No misspelling variants are generated for serf in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is serf, spelled S-E-R-F.
Definition
- 1Homme attachés au domaine qu’ils cultivent moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how serf appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le serf appartenait exclusivement à son propriétaire terrien.
Je suis riche, Hedwige, immensément riche, mais à la façon des seigneurs moldaves : riche de terres, de troupeaux, de serfs. Eh bien ! j’ai vendu au monastère de Hango pour un million de terres, de troupeaux, de villages.
This word in other languages
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 "serf", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).