sphynx
\sfɛ̃ks\
The verdict
“sphynx” is uncommon French (frequency #96,400 among 6,032 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #96,400
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Race de chat, sans poil mais à duvet léger, à grandes oreilles, à queue comme une queue de rat.
Corpus desk
Index FR-sphynx · sphynx · French
sphynx · rank #96,400 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #96,400
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH Stace
Nearest frequency peer: Stace (+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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « sphynx »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- souchet
souchet
3,605 corpus weight
- soupirait
soupirait
3,603 corpus weight
- sphynx
sphynx
3,601 corpus weight
- Stace
Stace
3,600 corpus weight
- Stadion
Stadion
3,599 corpus weight
- stance
stance
3,598 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « sphynx » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sphynx |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \sfɛ̃ks\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #96,400 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « sphynx » en français
Rare enough to double-check
sphynx is uncommon French at frequency #96,400 among 6,032 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \sfɛ̃ks\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Race de chat, sans poil mais à duvet léger, à grandes oreilles, à queue comme une queue de rat.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for sphynx, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is sphynx, spelled S-P-H-Y-N-X.
Definition
- 1Race de chat, sans poil mais à duvet léger, à grandes oreilles, à queue comme une queue de rat.
Synonyms
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
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "sphynx", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).