-isme
\ism\
The verdict
“-isme” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a suffix. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 5
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Utilisé pour former un nom correspondant à une doctrine, un dogme, une idéologie ou une théorie, qu'elle soit religieuse, politique ou scientifique.
Corpus desk
Index FR-isme · -isme · French
-isme · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "-" 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 | -isme |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Suffix |
| IPA | \ism\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “-isme” sits in French frequency
Rare enough to double-check
-isme is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as asuffix, transcribed \ism\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.
-isme has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. 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.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is -isme, spelled --I-S-M-E.
Definition
- 1Utilisé pour former un nom correspondant à une doctrine, un dogme, une idéologie ou une théorie, qu'elle soit religieuse, politique ou scientifique.
- 2Utilisé pour former un nom correspondant à une qualité ou un état constaté.
- 3Utilisé pour former un nom correspondant à un comportement, une particularité, une maladie.
- 4Pour désigner une forme de discrimination.
- 5Utilisé pour former un nom désignant une catégorie de mot ou de tournure linguistique.
- 6Utilisé pour former un nom désignant une activité sportive, professionnelle.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how -isme appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
communisme, fascisme, libéralisme, capitalisme, hédonisme, darwinisme, christianisme, islamisme, royalisme, judaïsme, bouddhisme, taoïsme, national-socialisme
analphabétisme, anachronisme, professionnalisme
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.