vœu
\vø\
The verdict
“vœu” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #11,688 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #11,688
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Promesse faite à Dieu, par laquelle on s’engage à quelque œuvre que l’on croit lui être agréable, et qui n’est pas de précepte.
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 | vœu |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \vø\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #11,688 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “vœu” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for vœu is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \vø\. Corpus data places it at rank #11,688 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for vœu in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "va", "vu", "vi", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is vœu, spelled V-Œ-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Promesse faite à Dieu, par laquelle on s’engage à quelque œuvre que l’on croit lui être agréable, et qui n’est pas de précepte.
- 2Promesse qu’on s’est faite à soi-même, résolution ferme qu’on a prise de faire ou de ne pas faire une chose.
- 3Offrande promise par un vœu → voir ex-voto.
- 4Souhait ; désir.
- 5Usage d’envoyer une carte, ou de présenter des souhaits de bonheur et de prospérité, au moment de noël ou du nouvel an. → voir vœux
- 6Cérémonie de la profession solennelle de l’état religieux. → voir vœux
- 7Demande d'affectation dans une formation, formulée par un étudiant au cours de son orientation.
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “vœu, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/v-u
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "vœu"?
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What words are commonly confused with "vœu"?
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Using “vœu”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is V-Œ-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \vø\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “va” - see the side-by-side comparison. vœu vs va
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter V in our French index: