SMS
\ɛ.s‿ɛ.m‿ɛs\
The verdict
“SMS” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #4,713) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #4,713
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Court message écrit qu’on peut envoyer de téléphone mobile à téléphone mobile.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sms · SMS · French
SMS · rank #4,713 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #4,713
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH sexuel
Nearest frequency peer: sexuel (-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 « SMS »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- révolutionn…
révolutionnaire
95,291 corpus weight
- sexuel
sexuel
95,289 corpus weight
- SMS
SMS
95,288 corpus weight
- soigner
soigner
95,287 corpus weight
- soirées
soirées
95,286 corpus weight
- spécifiques
spécifiques
95,285 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « SMS » 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 | SMS |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɛ.s‿ɛ.m‿ɛs\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,713 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « SMS »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for SMS is neighbouring look-alikes ("st", "su", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ɛ.s‿ɛ.m‿ɛs\. Frequency #4,713 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Court message écrit qu’on peut envoyer de téléphone mobile à téléphone mobile.".
SMS doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "st", "su", "so", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is SMS, spelled S-M-S.
Definition
- 1Court message écrit qu’on peut envoyer de téléphone mobile à téléphone mobile.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how SMS appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
L’Agence de sécurité nationale américaine, la NSA, a récupéré près de 200 millions de SMS par jour dans le monde, de façon non ciblée, pour en extraire des renseignements depuis 2011, rapporte jeudi 16 janvier le quotidien britannique The Guardian.
Elle m'a envoyé un SMS pour me dire qu'elle me kiffait plus trop... Le monde est en train de changer, c'est certain. Autrefois, la lâcheté était l’apanage des hommes, aujourd’hui les filles s'y mettent.
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
How do you spell "SMS"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "SMS", not the corpus desk frequency band.