approchaient
\a.pʁɔ.ʃɛ\
The verdict
“approchaient” is uncommon French (frequency #51,881 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #51,881
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe approcher.
Corpus desk
Index FR-approchaient · approchaient · French
approchaient · rank #51,881 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #51,881
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH apposition
Nearest frequency peer: apposition (-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 « approchaient »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- appartenanc…
appartenances
48,123 corpus weight
- applaudie
applaudie
48,122 corpus weight
- apposition
apposition
48,121 corpus weight
- approchaient
approchaient
48,120 corpus weight
- apéritifs
apéritifs
48,119 corpus weight
- arabi
arabi
48,117 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « approchaient » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | approchaient |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \a.pʁɔ.ʃɛ\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #51,881 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « approchaient » en français
Rare enough to double-check
approchaient is uncommon French at frequency #51,881 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \a.pʁɔ.ʃɛ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe approcher.".
approchaient doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. 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 documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is approchaient, spelled A-P-P-R-O-C-H-A-I-E-N-T.
Definition
- 1Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif imparfait du verbe approcher.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how approchaient appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Quand il disait ses poèmes étranges et doux, les bêtes approchaient pour mieux l’entendre, les lézards et les chiens, et les pigeons posant sur son épaule un vol rejoint, songeant peut-être à le défendre ; les hirondelles, ces oiseaux qui, pour mieux relier l’homme et le ciel, nichent sous les génoises des toitures, les chèvres qui débroutent les haies, b…
A Landange, en effet, ma grand’mère et les autres habitants du village, menaçaient des crochets et des griffes du Henricrochet (monstre aquatique du Ruisseau) les enfants qui s’approchaient trop des bords du ruisseau du village.
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 "approchaient", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 12 letters (nearest by frequency rank).