méchant
French, noun/me.ʃɑ̃/
méchant is spelled M-É-C-H-A-N-T (7 letters) and appears 22 times per million words in written French, the 3,448th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Méchant is a French masculine noun meaning “jerk (cruel person)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Personne cruelle”.
What does méchant mean in English?
adjective
- 1
datedbad, mediocre
à méchant ouvrier, point de bon outil
- 2
mean, unkind
noun
- 1
masculinejerk (cruel person)
- 2
masculinebaddie, bad guy, villain
les méchants et les gentils
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
adjective: 1. Mauvais, contraire de bon. 2. Sentir méchant : Sentir mauvais. 3. Qui ne vaut rien dans son genre, qui est maigre ou insuffisant, de mauvaise qualité ou dans un état déplorable, minable, miteux. 4. Sans valeur, incompétent.
noun: 1. Personne cruelle. 2. Dans la fiction, personnage animé de noirs desseins, opposé au héros bienfaisant de la fable, du film, du conte, etc.
noun: 1. La méchanceté, le mal.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of méchant
- méchante feminine
- méchants masculine plural
- méchantes feminine plural
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How do you pronounce méchant?
- /me.ʃɑ̃/
- \me.ʃɑ̃\
- [me.ʃɑ̃]
Sources: English Wiktionary, French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026); recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
English words that translate to méchant
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is méchant in French?
méchant appears 22 times per million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).