merlus
\mɛʁ.ly\
The verdict
“merlus” is uncommon French (frequency #68,462 among 5,038 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #68,462
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Poisson de mer du genre gade.
Corpus desk
Index FR-merlus · merlus · French
merlus · rank #68,462 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #68,462
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH mentaliste
Nearest frequency peer: mentaliste (-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 « merlus »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- menin
menin
31,541 corpus weight
- mentaliste
mentaliste
31,540 corpus weight
- merlus
merlus
31,539 corpus weight
- Meter
Meter
31,538 corpus weight
- MeToo
MeToo
31,537 corpus weight
- Mey
Mey
31,535 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « merlus » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | merlus |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mɛʁ.ly\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #68,462 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « merlus » en français
Rare enough to double-check
merlus is uncommon French at frequency #68,462 among 5,038 “M” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \mɛʁ.ly\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Poisson de mer du genre gade.".
merlus doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is merlus, spelled M-E-R-L-U-S.
Definition
- 1Poisson de mer du genre gade.
Synonyms
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 "merlus", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).