eau lourde
\o luʁd\
The verdict
“eau lourde” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) — Composé chimique de formule brute D₂O ou ²H₂O de densité 1,105 g/cm³ à 25°C, non toxique à faible dose, employé comme ralentisseur de neutrons dans les réacteurs nucléaires à uranium, à la place de...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | eau lourde |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \o luʁd\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “eau lourde” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for eau lourde is 10 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \o luʁd\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Composé chimique de formule brute D₂O ou ²H₂O de densité 1,105 g/cm³ à 25°C, non toxique à faible dose, employé comme ralentisseur de neutrons dans les réacteurs nucléaires à uranium, à la place de...".
No misspelling variants are generated for eau lourde in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is eau lourde, spelled E-A-U- -L-O-U-R-D-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Composé chimique de formule brute D₂O ou ²H₂O de densité 1,105 g/cm³ à 25°C, non toxique à faible dose, employé comme ralentisseur de neutrons dans les réacteurs nucléaires à uranium, à la place de l’eau légère (H₂O) qui absorbe trop de particules de fission.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “eau lourde, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/eau-lourde
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "eau lourde"?
What does "eau lourde" mean?
How do you pronounce "eau lourde"?
What language does "eau lourde" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “eau lourde”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is E-A-U- -L-O-U-R-D-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \o luʁd\ (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
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter E in our French index: