méritoire

\me.ʁi.twaʁ\

/\me.ʁi.twaʁ\/ adj

The verdict

“méritoire” is uncommon French (frequency #61,724 among 5,038 “M” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#61,724
frequency rank, French
5,038
“M” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui mérite l’approbation, l’estime.

Corpus desk

Index FR-meritoire · méritoire · French

méritoire · rank #61,724 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #61,724
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,038
  • PHOTO-FINISH méprisants

Nearest frequency peer: méprisants (-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 « méritoire »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « méritoire » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for méritoire
PropertyValue
Headwordméritoire
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdjective
IPA\me.ʁi.twaʁ\
Letters9
Frequency rank#61,724
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « méritoire » en français

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).méritoiretombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Voisins rares de la même bande: « méprisants » (#61,723), « métamorphosée » (#61,725), « mée » (#61,722). Parmi 5,038 lemmes en « M », « méritoire » est au #61,724. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

méritoire is uncommon French at frequency #61,724 among 5,038 “M” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \me.ʁi.twaʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

No misspelling variants are generated for méritoire in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 méritoire, spelled M-É-R-I-T-O-I-R-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Qui mérite l’approbation, l’estime.
  2. 2
    Qui rend Dieu miséricordieux pour le croyant.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how méritoire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Il se mit ensuite en apprentissage, en renouvelant les mêmes efforts, entêtement d’autant plus méritoire qu’il lui fallait un jour pour apprendre ce que d’autres savaient en une heure.
  2. Il allait se marier sans arrière-pensée d'aucune sorte et il menait déjà une conduite exemplaire, ce qui était assez méritoire de la part d'un ancien viveur.

Antonyms

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

How do you spell "méritoire"?
"méritoire" is spelled M-É-R-I-T-O-I-R-E. The IPA pronunciation is \me.ʁi.twaʁ\.
What does "méritoire" mean?
As an adjective, "méritoire" means: Qui mérite l’approbation, l’estime.
How do you pronounce "méritoire"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "méritoire" is \me.ʁi.twaʁ\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "méritoire" come from?
"méritoire" 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.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "méritoire", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list