méthane

/\me.tan\/ noun

Letters

7 characters

Frequency Rank

#19,074

in French word usage

Misspellings

11

tracked variants

Confusables

8

similar word pairs

méthane is aFrenchnoun. It means: Hydrocarbure saturé, premier membre de la famille des paraffines, de formule brute CH₄. Aussi appelé protocarbure d’hydrogène ou hydrure de méthyle, c’est un gaz inodore plus léger que l’air, facil... Pronounced \me.tan\. Often confused with mettant and métrage.

Key facts for méthane
PropertyValue
Headwordméthane
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\me.tan\
Letters7
Frequency rank#19,074
Misspellings tracked11
Confusable pairs8
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of méthane in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for méthane is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \me.tan\. Corpus data places it at rank #19,074 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Hydrocarbure saturé, premier membre de la famille des paraffines, de formule brute CH₄. Aussi appelé protocarbure d’hydrogène ou hydrure de méthyle, c’est un gaz inodore plus léger que l’air, facil...".

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for méthane, with forms such as "methane", "mméthane", and "mtéhane". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 8 confusable-pair relationships, "mettant", "métrage", "Methode", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

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 méthane, spelled M-É-T-H-A-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Hydrocarbure saturé, premier membre de la famille des paraffines, de formule brute CH₄. Aussi appelé protocarbure d’hydrogène ou hydrure de méthyle, c’est un gaz inodore plus léger que l’air, facilement liquéfiable. Très inflammable à l’air libre, ce gaz est le principal composant du gaz naturel, il prend naissance dans la fermentation des matières organiques, d’où son autre nom de « gaz des marais ».

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: methane,mméthane,mtéhane,méhtane,métahne,méthaen,méthanne,méthhane,méthnae,métthane,émthane

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for méthane

Misspelling Variants of "méthane"

methane7mméthane8mtéhane7méhtane7métahne7méthaen7méthanne8méthhane8
Misspelling Variants of "méthane"

Frequency rank: #19,074 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "méthane"?
"méthane" is spelled M-É-T-H-A-N-E. The IPA pronunciation is \me.tan\.
What does "méthane" mean?
As a noun, "méthane" means: Hydrocarbure saturé, premier membre de la famille des paraffines, de formule brute CH₄. Aussi appelé protocarbure d’hydrogène ou hydrure de méthyle, c’est un gaz inodore plus léger que l’air, facil...
What words are commonly confused with "méthane"?
"méthane" is commonly confused with "mettant", "métrage", "Methode". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "méthane"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "méthane" is \me.tan\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "méthane" come from?
"méthane" 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.