yao
\ja.o\
The verdict
“yao” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #38,107) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #38,107
- frequency rank, French
- 198
- “Y” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Relatif à la langue yao, langue des Yaos en Afrique australe.
Corpus desk
Index FR-yao · yao · French
yao · rank #38,107 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #38,107
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 198
- PHOTO-FINISH wp
Nearest frequency peer: wp (-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 « yao »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- wash
wash
61,897 corpus weight
- wick
wick
61,896 corpus weight
- wp
wp
61,895 corpus weight
- yao
yao
61,894 corpus weight
- yoon
yoon
61,893 corpus weight
- zig
zig
61,891 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « yao » 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 | yao |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ja.o\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #38,107 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « yao »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for yao is neighbouring look-alikes ("yo", "yu", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \ja.o\. Frequency #38,107 among 198 “Y” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for yao, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "yo", "yu", "yi", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is yao, spelled Y-A-O.
Definition
- 1Relatif à la langue yao, langue des Yaos en Afrique australe.
- 2Relatif aux Yaos ou Wayao, peuple bantou d’Afrique australe.
- 3Relatif aux Yaos, peuple de Chine.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how yao appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un partenariat entre l’homme et l’Indicateur observé dès 1588. Le cri utilisé par ces chasseurs de miel yaos, transmis depuis de nombreuses générations, est un trille fort suivi d’un bref grognement (« brrr-hm »)[…].
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 "yao"?
What does "yao" mean?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "yao", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).