serve

\sɛʁv\

/\sɛʁv\/ noun

The verdict

“serve” has 7 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #14,566. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#14,566
frequency rank, French
6,032
“S” headwords
7
tracked misspellings
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Femme attachée au domaine qu’elle cultive moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.

Corpus desk

Index FR-serve · serve · French

serve · rank #14,566 · 7 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #14,566
  • LEN-MID 5 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-MID 7 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,032
  • PHOTO-FINISH serrés

Nearest frequency peer: serrés (-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.

Pairs de rang près de l'aimant d'erreurs « serve »

Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin

corpus weight

What this shows « serve » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

serve vs sexe
60% similar
serve vs sure
60% similar
serve vs sire
60% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for serve
PropertyValue
Headwordserve
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\sɛʁv\
Letters5
Frequency rank#14,566
Misspellings tracked7
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « serve »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).servese place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « serrés » (#14,565), « Sibérie » (#14,567), « serrée » (#14,564). Parmi 6,032 lemmes en « S », « serve » est au #14,566. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 7 spelling variants around serve (IPA \sɛʁv\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #14,566 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Dominant gloss: "Femme attachée au domaine qu’elle cultive moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.".

Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for serve, with forms such as "esrve", "serev", and "serrve". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "sexe", "sure", "sire", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is serve, spelled S-E-R-V-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Femme attachée au domaine qu’elle cultive moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how serve appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Elle se trouvait à la cuisine, près du feu, vêtue comme une serve.
  2. Il fréquentait des femmes en noir, vivant seules dans les hameaux de la montagne, des esclaves, des serves ne parlant que le patois.

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • esrve
  • serev
  • serrve
  • servve
  • sevre
  • sreve
  • sserve

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of serve - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.

esrve2serev2serrve1servve1sevre2sreve2sserve1
Edit distance from "serve"

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 "serve"?
"serve" is spelled S-E-R-V-E. The IPA pronunciation is \sɛʁv\.
What does "serve" mean?
As a noun, "serve" means: Femme attachée au domaine qu’elle cultive moyennant redevance au seigneur qui en est le propriétaire.
What words are commonly confused with "serve"?
"serve" is commonly confused with "sexe", "sure", "sire". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "serve"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "serve" is \sɛʁv\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "serve" come from?
"serve" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "serve", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list