airain
\ɛ.ʁɛ̃\
The verdict
“airain” is uncommon French (frequency #51,256 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #51,256
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Métal rouge connu sous le nom de cuivre rouge, que l’on mélange avec la calamine pour faire le cuivre jaune, et avec l’étain pour faire le bronze ou la fonte.
Corpus desk
Index FR-airain · airain · French
airain · rank #51,256 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #51,256
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH aiguise
Nearest frequency peer: aiguise (-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.
Rangs de longue queue près de « airain »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- affranchie
affranchie
48,749 corpus weight
- agrippe
agrippe
48,748 corpus weight
- aiguise
aiguise
48,746 corpus weight
- airain
airain
48,745 corpus weight
- albus
albus
48,743 corpus weight
- allumes
allumes
48,741 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « airain » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | airain |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ɛ.ʁɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #51,256 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « airain » en français
Rare enough to double-check
airain is uncommon French at frequency #51,256 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ɛ.ʁɛ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for airain, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is airain, spelled A-I-R-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1Métal rouge connu sous le nom de cuivre rouge, que l’on mélange avec la calamine pour faire le cuivre jaune, et avec l’étain pour faire le bronze ou la fonte.
- 2ou Alliage de différents métaux dont le cuivre est la base ; bronze.
- 3Objet de ce métal.
- 4Symbole de la dureté.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how airain appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Mais dans leurs lits d’airain dormaient les fils des Anges.
Pendant longtemps l’airain satisfit à toutes les exigences de la civilisation ; il servait aux arts de la paix comme à ceux de la guerre, et si quelques autres métaux comme l’or, l’argent, le plomb, le mercure, étaient déjà connus des anciens, on ne les appliquait qu'à des usages très limités.
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
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "airain", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).