autan
\o.tɑ̃\
The verdict
“autan” is uncommon French (frequency #62,795 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #62,795
- frequency rank, French
- 6,727
- “A” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Désigne deux vents violents soufflant sur le Languedoc. L’autan blanc vient du golfe du Lion et l’autan noir vient du Sud-Ouest.
Corpus desk
Index FR-autan · autan · French
autan · rank #62,795 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #62,795
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,727
- PHOTO-FINISH aulnes
Nearest frequency peer: aulnes (-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 « autan »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- attirerait
attirerait
37,209 corpus weight
- Auerbach
Auerbach
37,208 corpus weight
- aulnes
aulnes
37,207 corpus weight
- autan
autan
37,206 corpus weight
- avançais
avançais
37,205 corpus weight
- aveuglante
aveuglante
37,204 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « autan » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | autan |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \o.tɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #62,795 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « autan » en français
Rare enough to double-check
autan is uncommon French at frequency #62,795 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \o.tɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for autan, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is autan, spelled A-U-T-A-N.
Definition
- 1Désigne deux vents violents soufflant sur le Languedoc. L’autan blanc vient du golfe du Lion et l’autan noir vient du Sud-Ouest.
- 2Vent impétueux.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how autan appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un vent d’autan.
L’autan furieux. — La fureur des autans.
Synonyms
Antonyms
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 "autan", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).