troubadour
/ˈtruːbəˌdɔː/
"troubadour" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“troubadour” is uncommon English (frequency #50,858 among 3,151 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,858
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An itinerant composer and performer of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling minstrel.
Corpus desk
Index EN-troubadour · troubadour · English
troubadour · rank #50,858 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #50,858
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH trod
Nearest frequency peer: trod (-1 rank slots)
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.
Long-tail ranks near “troubadour”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- Trinidadian
Trinidadian
49,146 corpus weight
- trod
trod
49,144 corpus weight
- troubadour
troubadour
49,143 corpus weight
- tumbleweed
tumbleweed
49,142 corpus weight
- Turkestan
Turkestan
49,141 corpus weight
- turnkey
turnkey
49,140 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “troubadour” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | troubadour |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈtruːbəˌdɔː/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #50,858 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “troubadour” in English
Rare enough to double-check
troubadour is uncommon English at frequency #50,858 among 3,151 “T” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈtruːbəˌdɔː/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An itinerant composer and performer of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling minstrel.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for troubadour in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old Occitan trobar (“to find”) via Old French troubadour. Piecewise doublet of trouveur. The correct English form is troubadour, spelled T-R-O-U-B-A-D-O-U-R.
Definition
- 1An itinerant composer and performer of songs in medieval Europe; a jongleur or travelling minstrel.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how troubadour appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Sitting in the courtroom ..., their laptops and tablets propped before them, power cables snaking through convoluted adapters, the Twitterati have sight of witnesses at all times – the troubadours, or perhaps the tricoteuses, of the digital revolution.
“"Not a human, not yet a vampire," to paraphrase one of your contemporary musical troubadours.”
Etymology
From Old Occitan trobar (“to find”) via Old French troubadour. Piecewise doublet of trouveur.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "troubadour", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).