crotale
\kʁɔ.tal\
The verdict
“crotale” is uncommon French (frequency #84,676 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #84,676
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Sorte de cliquette, employée spécialement dans le culte de Cybèle et dont on se servait fréquemment aussi pour accompagner la danse.
Corpus desk
Index FR-crotale · crotale · French
crotale · rank #84,676 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #84,676
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH Crotone
Nearest frequency peer: Crotone (+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 « crotale »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- criblage
criblage
15,329 corpus weight
- cringe
cringe
15,328 corpus weight
- crotale
crotale
15,325 corpus weight
- Crotone
Crotone
15,324 corpus weight
- cruze
cruze
15,323 corpus weight
- cryptique
cryptique
15,322 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « crotale » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | crotale |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \kʁɔ.tal\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #84,676 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « crotale » en français
Rare enough to double-check
crotale is uncommon French at frequency #84,676 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \kʁɔ.tal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for crotale in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is crotale, spelled C-R-O-T-A-L-E.
Definition
- 1Sorte de cliquette, employée spécialement dans le culte de Cybèle et dont on se servait fréquemment aussi pour accompagner la danse.
- 2Serpent très venimeux d’Amérique de la famille des vipéridés, dit aussi serpent à sonnettes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how crotale appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Penou prend ses crotales, sortes de castagnettes qu’il porte toujours attachées à la taille, et, claquant ses doigts avec une agilité merveilleuse, commence à attirer la clientèle.
Ses pieds passaient l’un devant l’autre, au rythme de la flûte et d’une paire de crotales.
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 "crotale", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).