caillou
Letters
7 characters
Frequency Rank
#16,314
in French word usage
Misspellings
7
tracked variants
Confusables
7
similar word pairs
caillou is aFrenchnoun. It means: Pierre de petite (ou moyenne) dimension. Pronounced \ka.ju\. Often confused with cailloux and carillon.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | caillou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ka.ju\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #16,314 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for caillou is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ka.ju\. Corpus data places it at rank #16,314 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for caillou, with forms such as "acillou", "cailluo", and "cailolu". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 7 confusable-pair relationships, "cailloux", "carillon", "Chaillot", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is caillou, spelled C-A-I-L-L-O-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Pierre de petite (ou moyenne) dimension.
- 2Pierre précieuse, cristal de roche, diamant.
- 3Récif, rocher.
- 4Tête, crâne.
- 5Glaçon.
- 6Personne têtue, tête dure.
- 7Morceau de sucre.
- 8Huître.
- 9Objectif, en référence à la matière minérale du verre ou la manière dont les lentilles sont enchâssées dans le fût en métal comme une pierre précieuse l'est sur une bague.
- 10Nouvelle-Calédonie.
- 11Île peu peuplée, avec peu d’activité, présentant peu d’intérêt.
- 12Corps céleste (planète, lune, astéroïde) d’apparence rocheuse et inhospitalière.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acillou,cailluo,cailolu,cailou,calilou,ccaillou,ciallou
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for caillou
Misspelling Variants of "caillou"
Frequency rank: #16,314 in French
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our French index: