kébab
\ke.bab\
The verdict
“kébab” is uncommon French (frequency #84,000 among 737 “K” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #84,000
- frequency rank, French
- 737
- “K” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Divers types de viande rôtie et épicée à l’orientale : döner kébab, chichekébab, etc.
Corpus desk
Index FR-kebab · kébab · French
kébab · rank #84,000 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #84,000
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 737
- PHOTO-FINISH Kourtney
Nearest frequency peer: Kourtney (-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 « kébab »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Karp
Karp
16,007 corpus weight
- Kirghizstan
Kirghizstan
16,005 corpus weight
- Kourouma
Kourouma
16,003 corpus weight
- Kourtney
Kourtney
16,002 corpus weight
- kébab
kébab
16,001 corpus weight
- laryngite
laryngite
15,997 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « kébab » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kébab |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ke.bab\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #84,000 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « kébab » en français
Rare enough to double-check
kébab is uncommon French at frequency #84,000 among 737 “K” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ke.bab\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for kébab, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is kébab, spelled K-É-B-A-B.
Definition
- 1Divers types de viande rôtie et épicée à l’orientale : döner kébab, chichekébab, etc.
- 2Sandwich ou roulade à base de viande de kébab cuite sur broche verticale agrémentée de légumes et de sauce.
- 3Établissement servant de tels sandwichs.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how kébab appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le kébab doit être servi brûlant. Quand la bouche peut le tolérer, il est déjà trop froid.
Je me résignai donc à imiter les autres visiteurs en engageant, pour quelques menues pièces, un jeune adolescent qui s’occuperait de m’éventer et d’écarter les insectes. Le plus difficile fut de le convaincre de les éloigner de ma table sans chercher à les écraser sous mes yeux entre dolmas et kébabs.
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); 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 "kébab", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).