SOS
\ɛ.s‿o.ɛs\
The verdict
“SOS” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,949) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,949
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Signal de détresse et demande d’assistance immédiate.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sos · SOS · French
SOS · rank #10,949 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,949
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH soigné
Nearest frequency peer: soigné (-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 « SOS »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Shanghai
Shanghai
89,055 corpus weight
- soccer
soccer
89,054 corpus weight
- soigné
soigné
89,053 corpus weight
- SOS
SOS
89,052 corpus weight
- soucieux
soucieux
89,051 corpus weight
- steam
steam
89,050 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « SOS » 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 | SOS |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɛ.s‿o.ɛs\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,949 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « SOS »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for SOS is neighbouring look-alikes ("st", "su", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \ɛ.s‿o.ɛs\. Frequency #10,949 among 6,032 “S” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No generated misspelling entries exist for SOS in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "st", "su", "ss", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is SOS, spelled S-O-S.
Definition
- 1Signal de détresse et demande d’assistance immédiate.
- 2Peut entrer dans la combinaison de syntagmes décrivant un service d'aide, urgent ou non.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how SOS appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Avant de couler, le Titanic a vainement lancé plusieurs SOS.
Il faudrait mettre en place un service SOS Langue française sur le modèle de SOS Médecins pour les gens qui souffrent de malaises linguistico-orthographiques urgents...
This word in other languages
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 "SOS"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "SOS", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).