chatoyant
\ʃa.twa.jɑ̃\
The verdict
“chatoyant” is uncommon French (frequency #80,982 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #80,982
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui chatoie, qui semble changer de couleur, comme l’œil-de-chat, suivant les différents aspects sous lesquels il est vu, en parlant d’un objet, d’un être vivant ou d’une entité physique.
Corpus desk
Index FR-chatoyant · chatoyant · French
chatoyant · rank #80,982 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #80,982
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH Chaves
Nearest frequency peer: Chaves (+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 « chatoyant »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- charentaise
charentaise
19,022 corpus weight
- charités
charités
19,021 corpus weight
- chatoyant
chatoyant
19,019 corpus weight
- Chaves
Chaves
19,018 corpus weight
- cheminant
cheminant
19,017 corpus weight
- Chesnais
Chesnais
19,016 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « chatoyant » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chatoyant |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ʃa.twa.jɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #80,982 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « chatoyant » en français
Rare enough to double-check
chatoyant is uncommon French at frequency #80,982 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \ʃa.twa.jɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for chatoyant, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is chatoyant, spelled C-H-A-T-O-Y-A-N-T.
Definition
- 1Qui chatoie, qui semble changer de couleur, comme l’œil-de-chat, suivant les différents aspects sous lesquels il est vu, en parlant d’un objet, d’un être vivant ou d’une entité physique.
- 2Se dit d’un style brillant et varié, fleuri, orné.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how chatoyant appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Les mouches étaient toutes distinguées les unes des autres ; il y en avait de dorées, d'argentées, de tigrées, de rembrunies, de chatoyantes.
Éméraude, tu dors, dans l’écrin de feuillage, Radieuse dans l’onde au chatoyant mirage.
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 "chatoyant", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).