pilou
\pi.lu\
The verdict
“pilou” is uncommon French (frequency #54,793 among 6,826 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,793
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Tissu de laine ou de coton pelucheux.
Corpus desk
Index FR-pilou · pilou · French
pilou · rank #54,793 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #54,793
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH Piet
Nearest frequency peer: Piet (-1 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 « pilou »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- phallique
phallique
45,211 corpus weight
- Phuket
Phuket
45,210 corpus weight
- Piet
Piet
45,209 corpus weight
- pilou
pilou
45,208 corpus weight
- piot
piot
45,206 corpus weight
- plato
plato
45,205 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « pilou » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | pilou |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pi.lu\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #54,793 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « pilou » en français
Rare enough to double-check
pilou is uncommon French at frequency #54,793 among 6,826 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \pi.lu\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Tissu de laine ou de coton pelucheux.".
pilou doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is pilou, spelled P-I-L-O-U.
Definition
- 1Tissu de laine ou de coton pelucheux.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pilou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Vous nous verrez empaqueter nos jupons de laine et de molleton, nos dodos de pilou et nos châles.
LA DUCHESSE – Vous ne pensez pas tout de même, mon cher, que puisque j’avais décidé de le loger au château et de promener moi-même dans les familles qui le réclament le malade de mon neveu, j’allais le supporter vêtu de pilou gris ?
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 "pilou", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).