cub
\ˈkʌb\
The verdict
“cub” is uncommon French (frequency #57,857 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #57,857
- frequency rank, French
- 8,609
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Petit d’un animal.
Corpus desk
Index FR-cub · cub · French
cub · rank #57,857 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #57,857
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,609
- PHOTO-FINISH crustacé
Nearest frequency peer: crustacé (-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 « cub »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Coutinho
Coutinho
42,147 corpus weight
- crustacé
crustacé
42,145 corpus weight
- cub
cub
42,144 corpus weight
- cuisinières
cuisinières
42,143 corpus weight
- cultivait
cultivait
42,142 corpus weight
- curatives
curatives
42,141 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « cub » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cub |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ˈkʌb\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #57,857 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « cub » en français
Rare enough to double-check
cub is uncommon French at frequency #57,857 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ˈkʌb\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for cub, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct French form is cub, spelled C-U-B.
Definition
- 1Petit d’un animal.
- 2Jeune homme gay, poilu, un peu enrobé, futur bear.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how cub appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
All three texts play with imagery drawn directly from the lived observation that a she-bear is very dangerous if one interferes with her cubs.
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 "cub", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).