madeleine

/\mad.lɛn\/ noun

Letters

9 characters

Frequency Rank

#6,525

in French word usage

Misspellings

12

tracked variants

Confusables

3

similar word pairs

madeleine is aFrenchnoun. It means: Sorte de petit gâteau, qui était particulièrement fabriqué à Commercy. Pronounced \mad.lɛn\. It ranks #6,525 in French word frequency. Often confused with Madelin and Madeline.

Key facts for madeleine
PropertyValue
Headwordmadeleine
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\mad.lɛn\
Letters9
Frequency rank#6,525
Misspellings tracked12
Confusable pairs3
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of madeleine in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for madeleine is 9 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \mad.lɛn\. Corpus data places it at rank #6,525 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for madeleine, with forms such as "amdeleine", "maddeleine", and "madeeline". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "Madelin", "Madeline", "madeleines", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

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 madeleine, spelled M-A-D-E-L-E-I-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Sorte de petit gâteau, qui était particulièrement fabriqué à Commercy.
  2. 2
    Expérience de mémoire involontaire, en référence à plusieurs passages de l’œuvre de Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, où le goût d’une madeleine replonge le narrateur dans un souvenir d’enfance.
  3. 3
    Hospice fondé et géré par des chrétiens dès les premières époques de la diffusion du judéo-christianisme oriental.
  4. 4
    Nom donné à différentes espèces de fruits (pomme, poire, raisin,...) dont la maturation est précoce et que l'on peut récolter à la Sainte Madeleine le 22 juillet.
  5. 5
    Synonyme de plusieurs espèces de cépages dont les noms officiels sont madeleine angevine oberlin (raisin de table blanc) à ne pas confondre avec la madeleine angevine (qui donne du vin blanc), jaoumet (qui donne du vin blanc), et quelques autres. Il existe aussi des «madeleine» de Céline, de Clermont, royale, noire, etc. Qui sont autant de cépages différents.
  6. 6
    Fer à plisser le linge.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: amdeleine,maddeleine,madeeline,madeleien,madeleinne,madelenie,madeliene,madelleine,madleeine,maedleine,mdaeleine,mmadeleine

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for madeleine

Misspelling Variants of "madeleine"

amdeleine9maddeleine10madeeline9madeleien9madeleinne10madelenie9madeliene9madelleine10
Misspelling Variants of "madeleine"

Frequency rank: #6,525 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "madeleine"?
"madeleine" is spelled M-A-D-E-L-E-I-N-E. The IPA pronunciation is \mad.lɛn\.
What does "madeleine" mean?
As a noun, "madeleine" means: Sorte de petit gâteau, qui était particulièrement fabriqué à Commercy.
What words are commonly confused with "madeleine"?
"madeleine" is commonly confused with "Madelin", "Madeline", "madeleines". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "madeleine"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "madeleine" is \mad.lɛn\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "madeleine" come from?
"madeleine" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter M in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.