serf
\sɛʁf\
The verdict
“serf” is an uncommon French word, ranked #56,263 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #56,263
- frequency rank, French
- 4
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Homme attachés au domaine qu’ils cultivent moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.
| 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) |
Where “serf” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for serf is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \sɛʁf\. Corpus data places it at rank #56,263 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "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.
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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Using “serf”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is S-E-R-F - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \sɛʁf\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- 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.