sinister
\ziˈnɪstɐ\
The verdict
“sinister” is uncommon French (frequency #88,103 among 6,032 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #88,103
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sinistre.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sinister · sinister · French
sinister · rank #88,103 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #88,103
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH sillé
Nearest frequency peer: sillé (-2 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 « sinister »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- sigur
sigur
11,902 corpus weight
- sika
sika
11,901 corpus weight
- sillé
sillé
11,900 corpus weight
- sinister
sinister
11,898 corpus weight
- slider
slider
11,896 corpus weight
- Smarties
Smarties
11,895 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « sinister » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sinister |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ziˈnɪstɐ\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #88,103 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « sinister » en français
Rare enough to double-check
sinister is uncommon French at frequency #88,103 among 6,032 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \ziˈnɪstɐ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Sinistre.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for sinister, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is sinister, spelled S-I-N-I-S-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1Sinistre.
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 "sinister", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).