écume de mer
\e.kym də mɛʁ\
The verdict
“écume de mer” 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
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) — Composé de plantes marines et de polypiers que les vagues jettent sur le rivage, et dont on se sert pour engraisser les terres.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | écume de mer |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \e.kym də mɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “écume de mer” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for écume de mer is 12 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \e.kym də mɛʁ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for écume de mer 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 écume de mer, spelled É-C-U-M-E- -D-E- -M-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Composé de plantes marines et de polypiers que les vagues jettent sur le rivage, et dont on se sert pour engraisser les terres.
- 2Sépiolite, utilisée pour la fabrication de petits objets, en particulier des fourneaux de pipes.
- 3Laitier très chaud, d’apparence blanche et boursoufflée.
Synonyms
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, “écume de mer, 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/ecume-de-mer
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Using “écume de mer”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is É-C-U-M-E- -D-E- -M-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \e.kym də mɛʁ\ (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 É in our French index: