meretricious

/\ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\/ adj

Letters

12 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

meretricious is anFrenchadj. It means: Voyant et de mauvais goût ; superficiellement attirant mais sans substance ; faussement attrayant. Pronounced \ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\.

Key facts for meretricious
PropertyValue
Headwordmeretricious
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdj
IPA\ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\
Letters12
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

meretricious is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for meretricious is 12 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for meretricious in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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.

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 meretricious, spelled M-E-R-E-T-R-I-C-I-O-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Voyant et de mauvais goût ; superficiellement attirant mais sans substance ; faussement attrayant.
  2. 2
    Mettant en jeu une relation de nature sexuelle illégale ou un défaut de consentement d’au moins une des deux parties.
  3. 3
    Racoleur, putassier : lié aux prostituées ou à la prostitution.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "meretricious"?
"meretricious" is spelled M-E-R-E-T-R-I-C-I-O-U-S. The IPA pronunciation is \ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\.
What does "meretricious" mean?
As an adj, "meretricious" means: Voyant et de mauvais goût ; superficiellement attirant mais sans substance ; faussement attrayant.
How do you pronounce "meretricious"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "meretricious" is \ˌmɛɹ.ɪ.ˈtɹɪʃ.əs\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "meretricious" come from?
"meretricious" 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.