tan
The verdict
“tan” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,493) as a symbol. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,493
- frequency rank, French
- 3,703
- “T” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Tangente.
Corpus desk
Index FR-tan · tan · French
tan · rank #16,493 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,493
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,703
- PHOTO-FINISH tactile
Nearest frequency peer: tactile (-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 « tan »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- suicidaire
suicidaire
83,512 corpus weight
- séminaires
séminaires
83,510 corpus weight
- tactile
tactile
83,509 corpus weight
- tan
tan
83,508 corpus weight
- Teresa
Teresa
83,505 corpus weight
- terminées
terminées
83,504 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « tan » 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 | tan |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Symbol |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #16,493 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « tan »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for tan is neighbouring look-alikes ("tu", "te", …), not just typos; it is asymbol. Frequency #16,493 among 3,703 “T” headwords. Gloss: "Tangente.".
Zero misspellings are on record for tan in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "tu", "te", "TV", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is tan, spelled T-A-N.
Definition
- 1Tangente.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tan appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
tan α = 1 d’où α = π/4 (= 45°).
tan² θ ≡ (tan θ)²
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 "tan", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).