picaresque
\pi.ka.ʁɛsk\
The verdict
“picaresque” is uncommon French (frequency #85,130 among 6,826 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #85,130
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Genre littéraire d’origine espagnole pratiqué entre le XVIᵉ et le XVIIIᵉ siècle, dont le personnage principal est un aventurier marginal et malhonnête.
Corpus desk
Index FR-picaresque · picaresque · French
picaresque · rank #85,130 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #85,130
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH Philippi
Nearest frequency peer: Philippi (-2 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 « picaresque »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- persuadent
persuadent
14,875 corpus weight
- pesés
pesés
14,874 corpus weight
- Philippi
Philippi
14,873 corpus weight
- picaresque
picaresque
14,871 corpus weight
- pik
pik
14,869 corpus weight
- pils
pils
14,868 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « picaresque » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | picaresque |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pi.ka.ʁɛsk\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #85,130 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « picaresque » en français
Rare enough to double-check
picaresque is uncommon French at frequency #85,130 among 6,826 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \pi.ka.ʁɛsk\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Genre littéraire d’origine espagnole pratiqué entre le XVIᵉ et le XVIIIᵉ siècle, dont le personnage principal est un aventurier marginal et malhonnête.".
picaresque doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 picaresque, spelled P-I-C-A-R-E-S-Q-U-E.
Definition
- 1Genre littéraire d’origine espagnole pratiqué entre le XVIᵉ et le XVIIIᵉ siècle, dont le personnage principal est un aventurier marginal et malhonnête.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how picaresque appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Mais concevoir la psychologie comme une simple affaire de mécanisme, prétendre ne pas tenir compte de la qualité morale des actes ni de leur retentissement intime... voilà qui nous conduit tout droit au picaresque.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "picaresque", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 10 letters (nearest by frequency rank).