ténacité
\te.na.si.te\
The verdict
“ténacité” has 12 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #22,725. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #22,725
- frequency rank, French
- 164,488
- “T” headwords
- 12
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Caractère de ce qui est tenace, de ce qui tient fortement.
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 | ténacité |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \te.na.si.te\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #22,725 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ténacité” sits in French frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 12 spelling variants around ténacité (IPA \te.na.si.te\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #22,725 among 164,488 “T” headwords. Wiktionary lists 5 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for ténacité, with forms such as "tenacite", "tnéacité", and "tténacité". 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 5 confusable-pair relationships, "tenait", "tenante", "tonalité", 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 its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is ténacité, spelled T-É-N-A-C-I-T-É.
Definition
- 1Caractère de ce qui est tenace, de ce qui tient fortement.
- 2Propriété qu’ont certains corps de soutenir une traction, une pression considérable sans s’allonger, sans se rompre.
- 3Capacité d'un matériau à encaisser l'énergie d'un choc, d'une contrainte, en résistant à la fissuration.(L'inverse se nomme douceur ou faiblesse.)
- 4Attachement invariable à une idée, à un projet, etc.
- 5Faculté de retenir toujours ou longtemps ce qu’elle a appris, en parlant de la mémoire.
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: tenacite,tnéacité,tténacité,téancité,ténaccité,ténacitté,ténaciét,ténactié,ténaicté,téncaité,ténnacité,étnacité
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ténacité - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 "ténacité"?
What does "ténacité" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "ténacité"?
How do you pronounce "ténacité"?
What language does "ténacité" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “ténacité”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is T-É-N-A-C-I-T-É - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \te.na.si.te\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “tenait” - see the side-by-side comparison. ténacité vs tenait
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Same frequency band
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.