calembour
\ka.lɑ̃.buʁ\
The verdict
“calembour” is uncommon French (frequency #60,617 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #60,617
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Jeu de mots fondé sur l’homophonie et la polysémie.
Corpus desk
Index FR-calembour · calembour · French
calembour · rank #60,617 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #60,617
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH Cabanis
Nearest frequency peer: Cabanis (-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 « calembour »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- bémols
bémols
39,386 corpus weight
- Cabanis
Cabanis
39,385 corpus weight
- calembour
calembour
39,384 corpus weight
- camorra
camorra
39,383 corpus weight
- canis
canis
39,382 corpus weight
- capello
capello
39,381 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « calembour » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | calembour |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ka.lɑ̃.buʁ\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #60,617 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « calembour » en français
Rare enough to double-check
calembour is uncommon French at frequency #60,617 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ka.lɑ̃.buʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Jeu de mots fondé sur l’homophonie et la polysémie.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for calembour, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is calembour, spelled C-A-L-E-M-B-O-U-R.
Definition
- 1Jeu de mots fondé sur l’homophonie et la polysémie.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how calembour appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Et tous les jours, à la Bourse, on saluait d’un nouveau calembour le spéculateur jalousé.
Le calembour est la fiente de l’esprit qui vole. Le lazzi tombe n’importe où ; et l’esprit, après la ponte d’une bêtise, s’enfonce dans l’azur. Une tache blanchâtre qui s’aplatit sur le rocher n’empêche pas le condor de planer. Loin de moi l’insulte au calembour !
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 "calembour", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).