sly
\ˈslaɪ\
The verdict
“sly” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #47,613) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #47,613
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Matois, malin.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sly · sly · French
sly · rank #47,613 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #47,613
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH SJ
Nearest frequency peer: SJ (-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 « sly »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- showcase
showcase
52,391 corpus weight
- Simona
Simona
52,390 corpus weight
- SJ
SJ
52,389 corpus weight
- sly
sly
52,388 corpus weight
- somnifère
somnifère
52,387 corpus weight
- soucoupes
soucoupes
52,386 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « sly » 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 | sly |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ˈslaɪ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #47,613 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « sly »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for sly is neighbouring look-alikes ("st", "su", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \ˈslaɪ\. Frequency #47,613 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Matois, malin.".
No misspelling variants are generated for sly in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "st", "su", "so", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is sly, spelled S-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Matois, malin.
Synonyms
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 "sly", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).