cherchai
\ʃɛʁ.ʃe\
The verdict
“cherchai” is uncommon French (frequency #86,537 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #86,537
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Première personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe chercher.
Corpus desk
Index FR-cherchai · cherchai · French
cherchai · rank #86,537 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #86,537
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH Charlieu
Nearest frequency peer: Charlieu (-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 « cherchai »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Champagny
Champagny
13,468 corpus weight
- chantants
chantants
13,466 corpus weight
- Charlieu
Charlieu
13,465 corpus weight
- cherchai
cherchai
13,464 corpus weight
- chevalets
chevalets
13,463 corpus weight
- chouquettes
chouquettes
13,462 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « cherchai » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cherchai |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ʃɛʁ.ʃe\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #86,537 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « cherchai » en français
Rare enough to double-check
cherchai is uncommon French at frequency #86,537 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \ʃɛʁ.ʃe\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Première personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe chercher.".
Zero misspellings are on record for cherchai in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 cherchai, spelled C-H-E-R-C-H-A-I.
Definition
- 1Première personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe chercher.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how cherchai appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Pour me mettre en condition, je me promenai de groupe en groupe, écoutant distraitement les conversations, je bus deux coupes de champagne coup sur coup, et enfin je cherchai Estelle des yeux.
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 "cherchai", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).