sub
\syb\
The verdict
“sub” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,413) as a preposition. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,413
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Préposition latine, qui s’emploie dans des locutions telles que :
Corpus desk
Index FR-sub · sub · French
sub · rank #10,413 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,413
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH ste
Nearest frequency peer: ste (-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 « sub »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- sourcils
sourcils
89,591 corpus weight
- sourd
sourd
89,590 corpus weight
- ste
ste
89,589 corpus weight
- sub
sub
89,588 corpus weight
- successives
successives
89,587 corpus weight
- suffisait
suffisait
89,586 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « sub » 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 | sub |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Preposition |
| IPA | \syb\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,413 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « sub »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for sub is neighbouring look-alikes ("sy", "SV", …), not just typos; it is apreposition pronounced \syb\. Frequency #10,413 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Préposition latine, qui s’emploie dans des locutions telles que :".
Zero misspellings are on record for sub in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "sy", "SV", "sur", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology 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 sub, spelled S-U-B.
Definition
- 1Préposition latine, qui s’emploie dans des locutions telles que :
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how sub appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
sub judice : en cours de jugement.
nihil novi sub sole : rien de nouveau sous le soleil.
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 "sub", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).