zoo
\zo\
The verdict
“zoo” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #7,263) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #7,263
- frequency rank, French
- 240
- “Z” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Lieu d’attraction où les visiteurs peuvent observer des animaux, et jouant le rôle d’une mini-réserve en captivité.
Corpus desk
Index FR-zoo · zoo · French
zoo · rank #7,263 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #7,263
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 240
- PHOTO-FINISH XXe
Nearest frequency peer: XXe (-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 « zoo »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- venger
venger
92,742 corpus weight
- wars
wars
92,740 corpus weight
- XXe
XXe
92,739 corpus weight
- zoo
zoo
92,738 corpus weight
- étroite
étroite
92,735 corpus weight
- achevé
achevé
92,734 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « zoo » 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 | zoo |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \zo\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #7,263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « zoo »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for zoo is neighbouring look-alikes ("zu", "zut", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \zo\. Frequency #7,263 among 240 “Z” headwords. Gloss: "Lieu d’attraction où les visiteurs peuvent observer des animaux, et jouant le rôle d’une mini-réserve en captivité.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for zoo, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "zu", "zut", "zur", 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 zoo, spelled Z-O-O.
Definition
- 1Lieu d’attraction où les visiteurs peuvent observer des animaux, et jouant le rôle d’une mini-réserve en captivité.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how zoo appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[…] « Ils ont la manie de les prendre vivants pour les vendre à quelque jardin zoologique. » — (Il disait : un zoo, par abréviation.)
Dans ce petit paysage intime, la disproportion de cet hippopotame fait paraître aquarium ou bassin pour Zoo le petit lac.
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
How do you spell "zoo"?
What does "zoo" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "zoo"?
How do you pronounce "zoo"?
What language does "zoo" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "zoo", not the corpus desk frequency band.