merlan
\mɛʁ.lɑ̃\
The verdict
“merlan” is uncommon French (frequency #64,610 among 5,038 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #64,610
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Espèce de poisson argenté de 30 à 50 cm vivant dans l’Atlantique nord à proximité des côtes d’Europe occidentale, de nom scientifique Merlangius merlangus.
Corpus desk
Index FR-merlan · merlan · French
merlan · rank #64,610 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #64,610
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH Meriem
Nearest frequency peer: Meriem (-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 « merlan »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- mensa
mensa
35,394 corpus weight
- mercantilis…
mercantilisme
35,393 corpus weight
- Meriem
Meriem
35,392 corpus weight
- merlan
merlan
35,391 corpus weight
- messagère
messagère
35,390 corpus weight
- MeV
MeV
35,389 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « merlan » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | merlan |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mɛʁ.lɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #64,610 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « merlan » en français
Rare enough to double-check
merlan is uncommon French at frequency #64,610 among 5,038 “M” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \mɛʁ.lɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
merlan doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. 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.
No documented word history exists for this headword, 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 merlan, spelled M-E-R-L-A-N.
Definition
- 1Espèce de poisson argenté de 30 à 50 cm vivant dans l’Atlantique nord à proximité des côtes d’Europe occidentale, de nom scientifique Merlangius merlangus.
- 2Espèce de poisson argenté de 30 à 50 cm vivant dans l’Atlantique nord à proximité des côtes d’Europe occidentale, de nom scientifique Merlangius merlangus.
- 3Coiffeur, perruquier.
- 4Pièce de viande de bœuf, très tendre.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how merlan appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Il déposa le merlan dans un plat pour le four et versa par-dessus le contenu d'un tupperware.
Merlan en colère, merlan frit, présenté dans une position telle qu'il se mord la queue.
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 "merlan", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).