miau
\miˈaʊ̯\
The verdict
“miau” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an onomatopoeia. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 4
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Miaou (imitation du cri du chat).
Corpus desk
Index FR-miau · miau · French
miau · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | miau |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Onomatopoeia |
| IPA | \miˈaʊ̯\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « miau » en français
Rare enough to double-check
miau is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anonomatopoeia, transcribed \miˈaʊ̯\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Miaou (imitation du cri du chat).".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for miau, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is miau, spelled M-I-A-U.
Definition
- 1Miaou (imitation du cri du chat).
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.