mélanine
\me.la.nin\
The verdict
“mélanine” is uncommon French (frequency #52,856 among 5,038 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #52,856
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Pigment noir de la peau des animaux et des hommes.
Corpus desk
Index FR-melanine · mélanine · French
mélanine · rank #52,856 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #52,856
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH méthamphétami…
Nearest frequency peer: méthamphétamine (+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 « mélanine »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- mutilée
mutilée
47,149 corpus weight
- myth
myth
47,147 corpus weight
- mélanine
mélanine
47,145 corpus weight
- méthamphéta…
méthamphétamine
47,144 corpus weight
- métisses
métisses
47,143 corpus weight
- nacer
nacer
47,142 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « mélanine » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mélanine |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \me.la.nin\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #52,856 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « mélanine » en français
Rare enough to double-check
mélanine is uncommon French at frequency #52,856 among 5,038 “M” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \me.la.nin\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Pigment noir de la peau des animaux et des hommes.".
mélanine doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
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. The correct French form is mélanine, spelled M-É-L-A-N-I-N-E.
Definition
- 1Pigment noir de la peau des animaux et des hommes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mélanine appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Le pigment noir, ou mélanine, qui est le plus important, a pour siège certaines cellules étoilées du derme, les mélanophores, qui peuvent […] déterminer l’assombrissement ou l’éclaircissement de la peau.
Quelques décennies plus tard, les Zemmour, Le Pen ou Ciotti font des chocs allergiques à la mélanine : ils ont suffoqué de voir Taubira nommée garde des Sceaux en 2012, ils défaillent devant Pap Ndiaye.
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 "mélanine", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).