voltaire
\vɔl.tɛʁ\
The verdict
“voltaire” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #9,412 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #9,412
- frequency rank, French
- 8
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 4
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Fauteuil dont le haut dossier incliné, l'assise et les accoudoirs sont garnis et rembourrés, meuble caractéristique du style Louis-Philippe.
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 | voltaire |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \vɔl.tɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #9,412 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “voltaire” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for voltaire is 8 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \vɔl.tɛʁ\. Corpus data places it at rank #9,412 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Fauteuil dont le haut dossier incliné, l'assise et les accoudoirs sont garnis et rembourrés, meuble caractéristique du style Louis-Philippe.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for voltaire, with forms such as "ovltaire", "vlotaire", and "volatire". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "voltige", "vulgaire", "voltage", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is voltaire, spelled V-O-L-T-A-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Fauteuil dont le haut dossier incliné, l'assise et les accoudoirs sont garnis et rembourrés, meuble caractéristique du style Louis-Philippe.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ovltaire,vlotaire,volatire,volltaire,voltaier,voltairre,voltarie,voltiare,volttaire,votlaire,vvoltaire
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of voltaire - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "voltaire"?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “voltaire”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is V-O-L-T-A-I-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \vɔl.tɛʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “voltige” - see the side-by-side comparison. voltaire vs voltige
- 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.