dictaphone
\dik.ta.fɔn\
The verdict
“dictaphone” is uncommon French (frequency #65,078 among 5,307 “D” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #65,078
- frequency rank, French
- 5,307
- “D” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Appareil de bureau inventé dans les années 1960 pour pouvoir dicter du courrier sans avoir recours à la présence d’une sténo. Les bandes (en forme de manchon), puis les disquettes ou les minis cass...
Corpus desk
Index FR-dictaphone · dictaphone · French
dictaphone · rank #65,078 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #65,078
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,307
- PHOTO-FINISH dici
Nearest frequency peer: dici (-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 « dictaphone »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Desfontaines
Desfontaines
34,927 corpus weight
- dici
dici
34,924 corpus weight
- dictaphone
dictaphone
34,923 corpus weight
- dimensionné
dimensionné
34,921 corpus weight
- disjoncteurs
disjoncteurs
34,920 corpus weight
- disquaires
disquaires
34,919 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « dictaphone » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dictaphone |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \dik.ta.fɔn\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #65,078 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « dictaphone » en français
Rare enough to double-check
dictaphone is uncommon French at frequency #65,078 among 5,307 “D” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \dik.ta.fɔn\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for dictaphone, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is dictaphone, spelled D-I-C-T-A-P-H-O-N-E.
Definition
- 1Appareil de bureau inventé dans les années 1960 pour pouvoir dicter du courrier sans avoir recours à la présence d’une sténo. Les bandes (en forme de manchon), puis les disquettes ou les minis cassettes étaient transmises au "pool dactylo" ou au secrétariat pour la frappe.
- 2(aujourd'hui) Appareil d’enregistrement du son, de très petite taille et facilement transportable, utilisé pour dicter le courrier et la prise de notes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how dictaphone appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Mais les dictaphones, c’est pour les vrais journalistes, ceux dont les articles sont publiés !
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 "dictaphone", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).