appeau

\a.po\

/\a.po\/ noun

The verdict

“appeau” is uncommon French (frequency #98,743 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#98,743
frequency rank, French
6,727
“A” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sorte de sifflet avec lequel on contrefait la voix des oiseaux pour les faire approcher ou pour les attirer dans quelque piège.

Corpus desk

Index FR-appeau · appeau · French

appeau · rank #98,743 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #98,743
  • LEN-LONG 6 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,727
  • PHOTO-FINISH apparaîtraient

Nearest frequency peer: apparaîtraient (-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 « appeau »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « appeau » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for appeau
PropertyValue
Headwordappeau
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\a.po\
Letters6
Frequency rank#98,743
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « appeau » en français

Cette échelle va du noyau du français courant (gauche) jusqu'à la traîne des formes rares (droite).appeautombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Voisins rares de la même bande: « apparaîtraient » (#98,742), « applicative » (#98,744), « Apamée » (#98,741). Parmi 6,727 lemmes en « A », « appeau » est au #98,743. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

appeau is uncommon French at frequency #98,743 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \a.po\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

appeau has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 appeau, spelled A-P-P-E-A-U.

Definition

  1. 1
    Sorte de sifflet avec lequel on contrefait la voix des oiseaux pour les faire approcher ou pour les attirer dans quelque piège.
  2. 2
    Oiseau dont on se sert pour appeler et attirer les autres oiseaux.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how appeau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Un appeau pour prendre des cailles.
  2. Ils parlaient […] de la chasse à la palombe, des appeaux qu’il faudrait bientôt monter, car les ramiers, qui précèdent les palombes, ne tarderaient pas.

Synonyms

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

How do you spell "appeau"?
"appeau" is spelled A-P-P-E-A-U. The IPA pronunciation is \a.po\.
What does "appeau" mean?
As a noun, "appeau" means: Sorte de sifflet avec lequel on contrefait la voix des oiseaux pour les faire approcher ou pour les attirer dans quelque piège.
How do you pronounce "appeau"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "appeau" is \a.po\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "appeau" come from?
"appeau" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "appeau", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list