coolie
\ku.li\
The verdict
“coolie” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Indien ou Chinois embauché pour aller travailler dans les diverses colonies européennes.
Corpus desk
Index FR-coolie · coolie · French
coolie · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | coolie |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ku.li\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « coolie » en français
Rare enough to double-check
coolie is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ku.li\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Indien ou Chinois embauché pour aller travailler dans les diverses colonies européennes.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for coolie, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is coolie, spelled C-O-O-L-I-E.
Definition
- 1Indien ou Chinois embauché pour aller travailler dans les diverses colonies européennes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how coolie appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
M. Garcin de Tassy demande avec instance qu’on songe à supprimer celui [le commerce] des coolies : on donne ce nom à de pauvres Hindous et Chinois, qui sont censés accepter librement l'esclavage pendant un certain nombre d'années.
La forme de l’esclavage était celle de l’esclavage domestique et le sort des esclaves était certainement moins dur que celui des nègres qui travaillaient dans les plantations d’Amérique ou même les coolies chinois ou canaques qui les ont remplacés.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.