paternalisme
\pa.tɛʁ.na.lism\
The verdict
“paternalisme” is an uncommon French word, ranked #51,650 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #51,650
- frequency rank, French
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Attitude, volontaire ou involontaire, consciente ou non, qui consiste à se conduire comme un père envers d’autres adultes sur lesquels on exerce ou tente d’exercer une autorité d’un ordre parental.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | paternalisme |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pa.tɛʁ.na.lism\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Frequency rank | #51,650 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “paternalisme” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for paternalisme is 12 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pa.tɛʁ.na.lism\. Corpus data places it at rank #51,650 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Attitude, volontaire ou involontaire, consciente ou non, qui consiste à se conduire comme un père envers d’autres adultes sur lesquels on exerce ou tente d’exercer une autorité d’un ordre parental.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for paternalisme in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is paternalisme, spelled P-A-T-E-R-N-A-L-I-S-M-E.
Definition
- 1Attitude, volontaire ou involontaire, consciente ou non, qui consiste à se conduire comme un père envers d’autres adultes sur lesquels on exerce ou tente d’exercer une autorité d’un ordre parental.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
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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Using “paternalisme”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-A-T-E-R-N-A-L-I-S-M-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pa.tɛʁ.na.lism\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.