nostrum
\nɔ.stʁɔm\
The verdict
“nostrum” is uncommon French (frequency #50,996 among 1,563 “N” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,996
- frequency rank, French
- 1,563
- “N” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Repère, nord, direction, tête.
Corpus desk
Index FR-nostrum · nostrum · French
nostrum · rank #50,996 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #50,996
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,563
- PHOTO-FINISH nimbus
Nearest frequency peer: nimbus (-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 « nostrum »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- nautisme
nautisme
49,008 corpus weight
- niaiserie
niaiserie
49,007 corpus weight
- nimbus
nimbus
49,006 corpus weight
- nostrum
nostrum
49,005 corpus weight
- nouent
nouent
49,004 corpus weight
- Nouri
Nouri
49,003 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « nostrum » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | nostrum |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \nɔ.stʁɔm\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #50,996 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « nostrum » en français
Rare enough to double-check
nostrum is uncommon French at frequency #50,996 among 1,563 “N” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \nɔ.stʁɔm\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Repère, nord, direction, tête.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for nostrum, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, 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 nostrum, spelled N-O-S-T-R-U-M.
Definition
- 1Repère, nord, direction, tête.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how nostrum appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Connaître le nostrum, savoir son affaire, être au courant d’une chose.
Perdre le nostrum, perdre la tête, ne plus savoir où l’on en est dans un travail commencé.
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 "nostrum", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).