école maternelle
\e.kɔl ma.tɛʁ.nɛl\
The verdict
“école maternelle” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Partie de la scolarité concernant les enfants de moins de six ans, avant le cours préparatoire de l’école élémentaire.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ecole-maternelle · école maternelle · French
école maternelle · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "É" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | école maternelle |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \e.kɔl ma.tɛʁ.nɛl\ |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « école maternelle » en français
Rare enough to double-check
école maternelle is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \e.kɔl ma.tɛʁ.nɛl\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
école maternelle has no tracked misspelling variants, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 école maternelle, spelled É-C-O-L-E- -M-A-T-E-R-N-E-L-L-E.
Definition
- 1Partie de la scolarité concernant les enfants de moins de six ans, avant le cours préparatoire de l’école élémentaire.
- 2Établissement scolaire destiné à ces enfants.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how école maternelle appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Je suis émerveillée à la fois du fonctionnement facile et des bienfaits de l’école maternelle.
Pauline, ma vieille camarade de l’école maternelle, s’étonnait, devenue grand-mère, des façons de ses petits-enfants. «Ils sont drôles, ces mignons, disait-elle. Il leur faut leur scouteur rien que pour aller faire pipi.»
Synonyms
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.