couvain
\ku.vɛ̃\
The verdict
“couvain” is uncommon French (frequency #81,028 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #81,028
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Ensemble des œufs, larves et nymphes contenus dans une ruche.
Corpus desk
Index FR-couvain · couvain · French
couvain · rank #81,028 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #81,028
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH cormorans
Nearest frequency peer: cormorans (-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 « couvain »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- contro
contro
18,976 corpus weight
- coopérants
coopérants
18,975 corpus weight
- cormorans
cormorans
18,974 corpus weight
- couvain
couvain
18,973 corpus weight
- crevaisons
crevaisons
18,971 corpus weight
- croûton
croûton
18,970 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « couvain » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | couvain |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ku.vɛ̃\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #81,028 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « couvain » en français
Rare enough to double-check
couvain is uncommon French at frequency #81,028 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ku.vɛ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for couvain, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 couvain, spelled C-O-U-V-A-I-N.
Definition
- 1Ensemble des œufs, larves et nymphes contenus dans une ruche.
- 2Tas d’œufs de punaises et de quelques autres insectes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how couvain appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Quelle aventure peut-elle l’attendre à l’Opéra, dans le grouillement d’une foule encapuchonnée et masquée de noir, qui coule ou s’agglutine aussi incompréhensiblement qu’une file de fourmis ou un couvain d’abeilles ?
La colonie d’abeilles noires au plus fort de la saison conserve des réserves généreuses malgré le couvain très développé. Les abeilles noires assurent le stock pour l’hiver. Entre le miel et le couvain, un cercle de pollen assure les apports en protéines pour les larves en développement.
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 "couvain", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).