hippopotame
The verdict
“hippopotame” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #34,116 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #34,116
- frequency rank, French
- 11
- letters
- 14
- tracked misspellings
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Très gros mammifère quadrupède amphibie herbivore d’Afrique, qui vit le jour dans l’eau douce (fleuves et rivières) et broute la nuit.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hippopotame |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \i.po.po.tam\ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #34,116 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hippopotame” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for hippopotame is 11 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \i.po.po.tam\. Corpus data places it at rank #34,116 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 14 likely wrong-spelling variants for hippopotame, with forms such as "hhippopotame", "hipopotame", and "hipoppotame". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. 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 hippopotame, spelled H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Très gros mammifère quadrupède amphibie herbivore d’Afrique, qui vit le jour dans l’eau douce (fleuves et rivières) et broute la nuit.
- 2Très gros mammifère quadrupède amphibie herbivore d’Afrique, qui vit le jour dans l’eau douce (fleuves et rivières) et broute la nuit.
- 3Terme superlatif dont on affuble des grosses personnes, des gros animaux.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhippopotame,hipopotame,hipoppotame,hippooptame,hippopoatme,hippopotaem,hippopotamme,hippopotmae,hippopottame,hippoppotame,hippoptoame,hipppootame,hpipopotame,ihppopotame
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of hippopotame — measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
Edit distance from "hippopotame"
Frequency rank: #34,116 in French
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "hippopotame"?
What does "hippopotame" mean?
What are common misspellings of "hippopotame"?
How do you pronounce "hippopotame"?
What language does "hippopotame" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “hippopotame”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-E — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \i.po.po.tam\ (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 H in our French index: