butane
\by.tan\
The verdict
“butane” is uncommon French (frequency #60,613 among 4,251 “B” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #60,613
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Hydrocarbure saturé de formule brute C₄H₁₀ de la famille des paraffines, à deux isomères (n-butane et isobutane ou méthylpropane).
Corpus desk
Index FR-butane · butane · French
butane · rank #60,613 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #60,613
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH Bussières
Nearest frequency peer: Bussières (-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 « butane »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- buffer
buffer
39,391 corpus weight
- bureaucrate
bureaucrate
39,390 corpus weight
- Bussières
Bussières
39,389 corpus weight
- butane
butane
39,388 corpus weight
- bémols
bémols
39,386 corpus weight
- Cabanis
Cabanis
39,385 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « butane » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | butane |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \by.tan\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #60,613 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « butane » en français
Rare enough to double-check
butane is uncommon French at frequency #60,613 among 4,251 “B” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \by.tan\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
butane has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file 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 butane, spelled B-U-T-A-N-E.
Definition
- 1Hydrocarbure saturé de formule brute C₄H₁₀ de la famille des paraffines, à deux isomères (n-butane et isobutane ou méthylpropane).
- 2(nom UICPA) L’isomère n-butane (CH₃ – CH₂ – CH₂ – CH₃).
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 "butane", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).