Herculanum
\ɛʁ.ky.la.nɔm\
The verdict
“Herculanum” is uncommon French (frequency #75,761 among 1,969 “H” headwords), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #75,761
- frequency rank, French
- 1,969
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Cité romaine antique, enterrée par une éruption du Vésuve en 79 après J.-C., et aujourd'hui fouillée.
Corpus desk
Index FR-herculanum · Herculanum · French
Herculanum · rank #75,761 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #75,761
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,969
- PHOTO-FINISH hiberner
Nearest frequency peer: hiberner (+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 « Herculanum »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Hassani
Hassani
24,245 corpus weight
- haw
haw
24,243 corpus weight
- Herculanum
Herculanum
24,240 corpus weight
- hiberner
hiberner
24,239 corpus weight
- hittite
hittite
24,237 corpus weight
- Hittites
Hittites
24,236 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « Herculanum » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Herculanum |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | \ɛʁ.ky.la.nɔm\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #75,761 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « Herculanum » en français
Rare enough to double-check
Herculanum is uncommon French at frequency #75,761 among 1,969 “H” headwords, classed as aproper noun, transcribed \ɛʁ.ky.la.nɔm\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Cité romaine antique, enterrée par une éruption du Vésuve en 79 après J.-C., et aujourd'hui fouillée.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for Herculanum, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is Herculanum, spelled H-E-R-C-U-L-A-N-U-M.
Definition
- 1Cité romaine antique, enterrée par une éruption du Vésuve en 79 après J.-C., et aujourd'hui fouillée.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how Herculanum appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Au retour je voulus voir Herculanum, cette ville que l'on venoit pour ainsi dire d’exhumer ; je descendis à la lueur des flambeaux dans cette habitation de gnomes, enfoncée sous terre d'environ quatre vingt pieds ; mais l’humidité, la fraicheur et la fumée des torches abrégèrent ma promenade.
[…]: c'est ainsi qu'une tentative récente de lire les papyrus carbonisés d’Herculanum à l'aide des rayons fouilleurs du synchrotron de Grenoble a suscité l'enthousiasme chez les spécialistes, […].
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 "Herculanum", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).