calamine
\ka.la.min\
The verdict
“calamine” is uncommon French (frequency #75,472 among 257,141 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #75,472
- frequency rank, French
- 257,141
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Appellation désuète qui peut désigner l’hémimorphite ou la smithsonite, mais aussi d’autres minéraux de néoformation des fourneaux (oxydes de zinc).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | calamine |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ka.la.min\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #75,472 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “calamine” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
calamine is uncommon French at frequency #75,472 among 257,141 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ka.la.min\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for calamine, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is calamine, spelled C-A-L-A-M-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1Appellation désuète qui peut désigner l’hémimorphite ou la smithsonite, mais aussi d’autres minéraux de néoformation des fourneaux (oxydes de zinc).
- 2Poudre rosâtre, mélange d’oxyde de zinc et d’oxyde ferrique.
- 3Résidu charbonneux de la combustion des gaz qui se dépose notamment sur les parois des cylindres de moteurs à explosion, les sièges de soupapes, ou toute pièce en acier subissant un traitement thermique.
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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Using “calamine”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-A-L-A-M-I-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ka.la.min\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.