arcane
\aʁ.kan\
The verdict
“arcane” is uncommon French (frequency #63,518 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #63,518
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui est secret, mystérieux.
Corpus desk
Index FR-arcane · arcane · French
arcane · rank #63,518 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #63,518
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH arboretum
Nearest frequency peer: arboretum (-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 « arcane »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- appétissante
appétissante
36,486 corpus weight
- Aral
Aral
36,485 corpus weight
- arboretum
arboretum
36,484 corpus weight
- arcane
arcane
36,483 corpus weight
- archiprêtre
archiprêtre
36,482 corpus weight
- arco
arco
36,481 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « arcane » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | arcane |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \aʁ.kan\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #63,518 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « arcane » en français
Rare enough to double-check
arcane is uncommon French at frequency #63,518 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \aʁ.kan\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Qui est secret, mystérieux.".
arcane has no tracked misspelling variants, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is arcane, spelled A-R-C-A-N-E.
Definition
- 1Qui est secret, mystérieux.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how arcane appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Opération arcane.
Peut-être au cours des années survenues, certaines communications arcanes avaient-elles été établies entre le passage abandonné et le monde extérieur.
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 "arcane", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).