poutine
/puːˈtiːn/
"poutine" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“poutine” is an uncommon English word, ranked #53,176 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #53,176
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A dish consisting of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, eaten primarily in Canada.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | poutine |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /puːˈtiːn/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #53,176 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “poutine” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for poutine is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /puːˈtiːn/. Corpus data places it at rank #53,176 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for poutine, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Canadian French poutine (“French fries with cheese curds and gravy; any of various kinds of pudding”); further etymology uncertain, possibly either: * a variant of French pouding (“pudding”), borrowed from English pudding (possibly ultimately … The correct English form is poutine, spelled P-O-U-T-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1A dish consisting of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, eaten primarily in Canada.
- 2Chiefly with a qualifying word: any of a number of variations on the basic poutine dish.
Etymology
Borrowed from Canadian French poutine (“French fries with cheese curds and gravy; any of various kinds of pudding”); further etymology uncertain, possibly either: * a variant of French pouding (“pudding”), borrowed from English pudding (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- (“to swell”)); or * from a dialectal French word influenced by French pouding or English pudding, though this word has not been identified. The Canadian French word is generally thought to have been coined by the Canadian restaurateur Fernand Lachance (1918–2004) as a name for the dish which is said to have been first served at his restaurant Lutin Qui Rit in Warwick, Quebec, in 1957.
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 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “poutine”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-O-U-T-I-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /puːˈtiːn/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.