plaque
/plæk/noun
plaque is spelled P-L-A-Q-U-E. The wrong spelling people search most is placque: about 280 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 25 of all searches for the word. Plaque is a noun meaning “Any flat, thin piece of clay, ivory, metal, etc., used for ornament, or for painting pictures upon, as a…”. The plural of plaque is plaques.
How many letters and syllables are in plaque?
| Letters | 6: P-L-A-Q-U-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.9 times per million words; the 11,373rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, placque, about 280 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell plaque?
Plaque is spelled P-L-A-Q-U-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 25 of the searches for plaque in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is plaque?
Plaque appears 4.9 times per million words in written English, the 11,373rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce plaque?
- UK /plæk/
- UK /plɑːk/
- /plak/
Plaque has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-plaque.ogg, En-au-plaque.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with plaque?
2 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as plaque from its last stressed vowel (/æk/, British pronunciation):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of plaque
- plaques plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does plaque mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Any flat, thin piece of clay, ivory, metal, etc., used for ornament, or for painting pictures upon, as a dish, plate, slab, etc., hung upon a wall; also, a smaller decoration worn by a person, such as a brooch.
- 2
A piece of flat metal with writing on it, attached to a building, monument, or other structure to remind people of a person or an event.
- 3
A small card representing an amount of money, used for betting in casinos; a sort of gaming chip.
- 4
A clearing in a bacterial lawn caused by a virus.
- 5
In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system: any flat, thin musical instrument.
blown plaques
- 6
A broad patch of abnormal tissue distinguishable from surrounding tissue, especially a broad papule (“inflamed, irritated patch”) on the skin.
- 7
An abnormal accumulation of material in or on an organ of the body, often associated with disease.
amyloid plaque
- 8
An accumulation in artery walls made up of macrophage cells and debris containing lipids, (cholesterol and fatty acids), calcium, and connective tissue; an atheroma.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Plaque in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does plaque come from?
Unadapted borrowing from French plaque (“plate, sheet (of metal); slab (of marble); bacteria on teeth”), from French plaquer, Middle French plaquer (“to plate”), from Middle Dutch placken (“to patch, beat metal into a thin plate”), from placke (“disk, patch, stain”), from Old Dutch *plagga (“patch”), from Proto-Germanic *plaggą (“patch”). The word is cognate with Middle Low German placke, plagge (“small stain, scraps, rags, thin grass”), German Placken (“spot, patch”), Saterland Frisian plak, plakke (“a blow, slap”), Swedish plagg (“clothing, garment”). Compare plack.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).