chia
\ʃja\
The verdict
“chia” is uncommon French (frequency #50,717 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,717
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Nom vernaculaire de Salvia hispanica, plante de la famille des lamiacées, originaire du Mexique et du Guatemala que l’on cultive pour ses graines comestibles.
Corpus desk
Index FR-chia · chia · French
chia · rank #50,717 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #50,717
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH chercherais
Nearest frequency peer: chercherais (-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 « chia »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- charognards
charognards
49,286 corpus weight
- chercherais
chercherais
49,285 corpus weight
- chia
chia
49,284 corpus weight
- Chir
Chir
49,283 corpus weight
- choriste
choriste
49,282 corpus weight
- châtier
châtier
49,281 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « chia » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chia |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʃja\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #50,717 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « chia » en français
Rare enough to double-check
chia is uncommon French at frequency #50,717 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ʃja\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Nom vernaculaire de Salvia hispanica, plante de la famille des lamiacées, originaire du Mexique et du Guatemala que l’on cultive pour ses graines comestibles.".
chia has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 chia, spelled C-H-I-A.
Definition
- 1Nom vernaculaire de Salvia hispanica, plante de la famille des lamiacées, originaire du Mexique et du Guatemala que l’on cultive pour ses graines comestibles.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how chia appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
De la chia sort une substance siccative, aux mêmes propriétés que l’huile de lin, et la cacahuananchi produit une matière épaisse qui se convertit d’elle-même en résine ; on en obtient de beaux vernis.
Au rayon des oméga 3, on trouve la graine de chia (bien prononcer « kia »), une sauge bienfaisante, qui, à en croire ses promoteurs, aurait une teneur remarquable en « bons acides gras polyinsaturés ». — (« Healthy : Vrai-faux sain », Malbouffe, le dico, Les Dossiers du Canard enchaîné nᵒ 147, avril 2018, page 39)
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 "chia", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).