un
\œ̃\
The verdict
“un” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #12 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #12
- frequency rank, French
- 2
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Marque l’unité, le fait qu’une personne ou une chose est seule, unique en son espèce.
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 | un |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \œ̃\ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “un” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for un is 2 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \œ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #12 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No generated misspelling entries exist for un in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "up", "UV", "ut", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 un, spelled U-N.
Definition
- 1Marque l’unité, le fait qu’une personne ou une chose est seule, unique en son espèce.
- 2Un très petit nombre indéterminé.
- 3Ordinal pour premier.
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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Using “un”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is U-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \œ̃\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “up” - see the side-by-side comparison. un vs up
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
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.