pennon
The verdict
“pennon” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 6
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Sorte d’étendard en forme de queue d’oiseau, en usage au temps de la chevalerie. Un chevalier devait commander au moins vingt hommes pour avoir le droit de l'arborer.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pennon |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pɛ.nɔ̃\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “pennon” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for pennon is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɛ.nɔ̃\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for pennon 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 pennon, spelled P-E-N-N-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Sorte d’étendard en forme de queue d’oiseau, en usage au temps de la chevalerie. Un chevalier devait commander au moins vingt hommes pour avoir le droit de l'arborer.
- 2Petite bande de tissu attachée aux haubans d'un voilier et servant à définir la direction du vent, pour aider le barreur à se positionner.
- 3Girouette faite de petites plumes montées sur des morceaux de liège traversés d’un fil, qu’on laisse flotter au gré du vent pour en connaître la direction ; on y substitue souvent une petite flamme d’étamine qui remplit le même objet.
- 4Milices urbaines de la ville de Lyon, entre 1228 et 1789, remplacé par les sections puis par les arrondissements.
- 5À Lyon, capitaine d’un pennon.
- 6Meuble représentant la bannière du même nom dans les armoiries. Il est rarement représenté seul mais plutôt comme complément à un autre meuble (agneau pascal, navire, château, chevalier…). Il est généralement figuré attaché à un mât, flottant au vent, long et fourché. À rapprocher de bannière, étendard, gonfanon, guidon, oriflamme et pavillon.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “pennon, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/pennon
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Using “pennon”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-E-N-N-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pɛ.nɔ̃\ (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: