tourtière
/tʊɚˈtjɛɚ/
"tourtiere" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tourtière” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A type of traditional French-Canadian meat pie, usually made with pork.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tourtiere · tourtière · English
tourtière · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tourtière |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tʊɚˈtjɛɚ/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tourtière” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tourtière is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /tʊɚˈtjɛɚ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A type of traditional French-Canadian meat pie, usually made with pork.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for tourtière, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Canadian French tourtière, from a cooking vessel of the same name, from French tourte (“meat pie”). There is a common false etymology that it derives from the alternative meaning tourte (“passenger pigeon”). The correct English form is tourtière, spelled T-O-U-R-T-I-È-R-E.
Definition
- 1A type of traditional French-Canadian meat pie, usually made with pork.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how tourtière appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Last December, I called my mother to get her recipe for tourtière, a beloved traditional French-Canadian dish. It would be the meaningful heart of a bundle of gifts I had lovingly gathered to honour a Métis elder I had recently met. To share this recipe for tourtière was to share a piece of my family’s story with this elder, to whom I owed a great debt of…
Etymology
From Canadian French tourtière, from a cooking vessel of the same name, from French tourte (“meat pie”). There is a common false etymology that it derives from the alternative meaning tourte (“passenger pigeon”).
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.