motu
\mo.tu\
The verdict
“motu” is uncommon French (frequency #59,464 among 5,038 “M” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #59,464
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Îlot de corail.
Corpus desk
Index FR-motu · motu · French
motu · rank #59,464 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #59,464
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH Motown
Nearest frequency peer: Motown (-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 « motu »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Montferrat
Montferrat
40,540 corpus weight
- morcelé
morcelé
40,539 corpus weight
- Motown
Motown
40,538 corpus weight
- motu
motu
40,537 corpus weight
- mouvantes
mouvantes
40,535 corpus weight
- Munichois
Munichois
40,534 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « motu » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | motu |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \mo.tu\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #59,464 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « motu » en français
Rare enough to double-check
motu is uncommon French at frequency #59,464 among 5,038 “M” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \mo.tu\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Îlot de corail.".
No misspelling variants are generated for motu in our 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.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, 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 motu, spelled M-O-T-U.
Definition
- 1Îlot de corail.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how motu appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Laissant le Firecrest à l’ancre dans la baie de Rikitea, je pris mon petit Berthon pour me rendre au motu, ou îlot de corail, qui était le centre du secteur de plonge […].
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 "motu", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).