zou
\zu\
The verdict
“zou” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #34,363) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #34,363
- frequency rank, French
- 240
- “Z” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - En avant, hors d’ici.
Corpus desk
Index FR-zou · zou · French
zou · rank #34,363 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #34,363
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 240
- PHOTO-FINISH végétatif
Nearest frequency peer: végétatif (-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 « zou »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- voltige
voltige
65,641 corpus weight
- voyer
voyer
65,640 corpus weight
- végétatif
végétatif
65,639 corpus weight
- zou
zou
65,638 corpus weight
- éduquée
éduquée
65,637 corpus weight
- éjecter
éjecter
65,636 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « zou » 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 | zou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | \zu\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #34,363 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « zou »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for zou is neighbouring look-alikes ("zu", "zut", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection pronounced \zu\. Frequency #34,363 among 240 “Z” headwords. Gloss: "En avant, hors d’ici.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for zou in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "zu", "zut", "zur", 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, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is zou, spelled Z-O-U.
Definition
- 1En avant, hors d’ici.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how zou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Allez, zou ! du balai ! Laissez-moi un peu respirer.
Bon allez, zou ! j’y vais. À la prochaine.
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 "zou"?
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "zou", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).