soie

\swa\

/\swa\/ noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“soie” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #6,891) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#6,891
frequency rank, French
6,032
“S” headwords
3
tracked misspellings
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Matière filamenteuse, fine et brillante, produite par les araignées et les chenilles de la plupart des insectes.

Corpus desk

Index FR-soie · soie · French

soie · rank #6,891 · 3 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #6,891
  • LEN-MID 4 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-LOW 3 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,032
  • PHOTO-FINISH soeurs

Nearest frequency peer: soeurs (-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 « soie »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « soie » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

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).

soie vs son
50% similar
soie vs sol
50% similar
soie vs sou
50% similar

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

Key facts for soie
PropertyValue
Headwordsoie
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\swa\
Letters4
Frequency rank#6,891
Misspellings tracked3
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « soie »

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

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

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « soeurs » (#6,890), « sonore » (#6,892), « souhaité » (#6,893). Parmi 6,032 lemmes en « S », « soie » est au #6,891. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for soie is neighbouring look-alikes ("son", "sol", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \swa\. Frequency #6,891 among 6,032 “S” headwords. 9 recorded senses keep meaning in play.

Our generated misspelling index lists 3 likely wrong-spelling variants for soie, with forms such as "sioe", "soei", and "ssoie". 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, "son", "sol", "sou", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, 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 soie, spelled S-O-I-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Matière filamenteuse, fine et brillante, produite par les araignées et les chenilles de la plupart des insectes.
  2. 2
    Fibre textile ou étoffe fabriquée à partir de cocons, généralement ceux du bombyx du mûrier ou ver à soie.
  3. 3
    Poil de certains animaux.
  4. 4
    Soie artificielle.
  5. 5
    Partie du fer d’une épée, d’un sabre, d’un couteau, qui entre dans la poignée, dans le manche afin d’y placer la main pour la tenir.
  6. 6
    Seime de la pince du cheval.
  7. 7
    Partie principale de la ligne située entre le backing et le bas de ligne, en matière synthétique ou en soie naturelle, et dont le poids permet le lancer de la mouche à une distance plus ou moins importante.
  8. 8
    Poil long et raide, tenant souvent lieu d'un élément du périanthe.
  9. 9
    Chez les bryophytes, pédicelle portant l'urne.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Ils ont observé que les femelles produisent des fils de soie chargés de phéromones.
  2. Justinien envoya en Chine deux moines persans de la religion du Christ, sous prétexte d’y répandre la nouvelle foi : leur véritable mission avait pour objet de découvrir et de rapporter en Europe le secret et la matière de la soie.

This word in other languages

silk(English)seda(Español)Seide(Deutsch)seda(Português)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • sioe
  • soei
  • ssoie

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of soie - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.

sioe2soei2ssoie1
Edit distance from "soie"

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 "soie"?
"soie" is spelled S-O-I-E. The IPA pronunciation is \swa\.
What does "soie" mean?
As a noun, "soie" means: Matière filamenteuse, fine et brillante, produite par les araignées et les chenilles de la plupart des insectes.
What words are commonly confused with "soie"?
"soie" is commonly confused with "son", "sol", "sou". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "soie"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "soie" is \swa\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "soie" come from?
"soie" 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 "soie", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

URSS#6,906visé#6,909what#6,911OTAN#6,864

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list