picoter
\pi.kɔ.te\
The verdict
“picoter” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Piquer légèrement, de façon répétée.
Corpus desk
Index FR-picoter · picoter · French
picoter · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | picoter |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \pi.kɔ.te\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « picoter » en français
Rare enough to double-check
picoter is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \pi.kɔ.te\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 7 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for picoter in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 picoter, spelled P-I-C-O-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1Piquer légèrement, de façon répétée.
- 2Faire aux fruits des petites piqûres, en les becquetant, en parlant des oiseaux.
- 3Faire sentir légèrement l’éperon à un cheval, à diverses reprises.
- 4Attaquer souvent quelqu’un par des paroles dites avec malignité ; chercher à le fâcher, à l’irriter.
- 5Saisir sa nourriture de-ci de-là, grappiller.
- 6Irriter comme par de petites piqûres nombreuses et renouvelées; causer des picotements
- 7Tacher de picots.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how picoter appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un sinapisme qui picote la peau.
Je partis par sauts et par bonds, pour éviter les flaques grises que la pluie picotait de mille petits ronds.
Synonyms
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.