curare
\ky.ʁaʁ\
The verdict
“curare” is uncommon French (frequency #78,313 among 257,141 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #78,313
- frequency rank, French
- 257,141
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Nom donné à plusieurs substances extraites entre autres de certaines lianes d'Amazonie, notamment Chondodendron tomentosum et Strychnos toxifera, poison violent qui provoque une paralysie des muscl...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | curare |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ky.ʁaʁ\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #78,313 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “curare” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
curare is uncommon French at frequency #78,313 among 257,141 “C” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ky.ʁaʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Nom donné à plusieurs substances extraites entre autres de certaines lianes d'Amazonie, notamment Chondodendron tomentosum et Strychnos toxifera, poison violent qui provoque une paralysie des muscl...".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for curare, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 curare, spelled C-U-R-A-R-E.
Definition
- 1Nom donné à plusieurs substances extraites entre autres de certaines lianes d'Amazonie, notamment Chondodendron tomentosum et Strychnos toxifera, poison violent qui provoque une paralysie des muscles en bloquant le passage du message nerveux au niveau de la plaque motrice, dont certaines peuplades de l’Amérique du Sud et les aborigènes se servent pour empoisonner leurs flèches et qui sert en médecine par exemple en anesthésie pour provoquer un relâchement musculaire.
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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Using “curare”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is C-U-R-A-R-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ky.ʁaʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Other uncommon French words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.