pâteux
The verdict
“pâteux” is an uncommon French word, ranked #78,774 in French word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #78,774
- frequency rank, French
- 6
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Qui a la consistance ou l'aspect de la pâte.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pâteux |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \pɑ.tø\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #78,774 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pâteux” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for pâteux is 6 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɑ.tø\. Corpus data places it at rank #78,774 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for pâteux in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
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 pâteux, spelled P-Â-T-E-U-X, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Qui a la consistance ou l'aspect de la pâte.
- 2Se dit du pain qui n’est pas assez levé ou pas assez cuit.
- 3Qualifie les choses qui font dans la bouche le même effet que ferait de la pâte.
- 4Qualifie un liquide dans lequel des matières en suspens empêchent son entière liquidité.
- 5Qualifie la bouche, ou ce qui en a trait, lorsqu’elle semble empâtée d’une salive épaisse.
- 6Qualifie un style mou, lourd, filandreux.
- 7Qualifie une parole embarrassée.
- 8Qui semble avoir été peint d'un pinceau empâté.
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 “pâteux”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-Â-T-E-U-X — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pɑ.tø\ (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
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index: