wax
\waks\
The verdict
“wax” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #40,557) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #40,557
- frequency rank, French
- 549
- “W” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Tissu en vogue en Afrique, dont les motifs sont réalisés avec des cires hydrophobes.
Corpus desk
Index FR-wax · wax · French
wax · rank #40,557 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #40,557
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 549
- PHOTO-FINISH véhiculent
Nearest frequency peer: véhiculent (-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 « wax »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- volontariste
volontariste
59,447 corpus weight
- végétalien
végétalien
59,446 corpus weight
- véhiculent
véhiculent
59,445 corpus weight
- wax
wax
59,444 corpus weight
- yet
yet
59,442 corpus weight
- échangée
échangée
59,440 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « wax » 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 | wax |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \waks\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #40,557 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « wax »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for wax is neighbouring look-alikes ("we", "wc", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \waks\. Frequency #40,557 among 549 “W” headwords. Gloss: "Tissu en vogue en Afrique, dont les motifs sont réalisés avec des cires hydrophobes.".
wax has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "we", "wc", "wu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is wax, spelled W-A-X.
Definition
- 1Tissu en vogue en Afrique, dont les motifs sont réalisés avec des cires hydrophobes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how wax appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Et là, au-dessus des pyramides de boîtes de lait en poudre Nido, de la futaie luxuriante des coupons de tissu wax, des noires colonnes de pneus, des faisceaux de houes, de pioches, de machettes, je vis, dans une sorte de mirador entièrement vitré, drapée dans un pagne dont les ramages portaient comme un gros fruit le portrait du président auréolé de la de…
Les mamas africaines n’ont plus le monopole du wax. Indissociable du boubou, ce tissu graphique et survitaminé s’est mondialisé sous l’impulsion de jeunes créateurs.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "wax", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).