well
\vɛl\
The verdict
“well” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,510) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,510
- frequency rank, French
- 549
- “W” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de wellen.
Corpus desk
Index FR-well · well · French
well · rank #16,510 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,510
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-MID 549
- PHOTO-FINISH vitrines
Nearest frequency peer: vitrines (-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 « well »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- vignobles
vignobles
83,494 corpus weight
- virement
virement
83,493 corpus weight
- vitrines
vitrines
83,492 corpus weight
- well
well
83,491 corpus weight
- woods
woods
83,490 corpus weight
- XIIIe
XIIIe
83,489 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « well » 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 | well |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \vɛl\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #16,510 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « well »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for well is neighbouring look-alikes ("Wes", "wen", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced \vɛl\. Frequency #16,510 among 549 “W” headwords. Gloss: "Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de wellen.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for well, with forms such as "ewll", "wel", and "wlel". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Wes", "wen", "wil", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is well, spelled W-E-L-L.
Definition
- 1Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de wellen.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ewll
- wel
- wlel
- wwell
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of well - 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
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "well", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).