plague
\pleɪɡ\
The verdict
“plague” is uncommon French (frequency #82,338 among 6,826 “P” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #82,338
- frequency rank, French
- 6,826
- “P” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Peste (maladie).
Corpus desk
Index FR-plague · plague · French
plague · rank #82,338 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #82,338
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,826
- PHOTO-FINISH pinon
Nearest frequency peer: pinon (-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 « plague »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Phocas
Phocas
17,666 corpus weight
- piggy
piggy
17,665 corpus weight
- pinon
pinon
17,664 corpus weight
- plague
plague
17,663 corpus weight
- playmate
playmate
17,662 corpus weight
- pliera
pliera
17,661 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « plague » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | plague |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pleɪɡ\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #82,338 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « plague » en français
Rare enough to double-check
plague is uncommon French at frequency #82,338 among 6,826 “P” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \pleɪɡ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
plague doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is plague, spelled P-L-A-G-U-E.
Definition
- 1Peste (maladie).
- 2Fléau.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how plague appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The pestilent disease "Plague" is caused by the virulent bacterium "Yersinia pestis" and mostly known by its variant form bubonic plague.
A plague is a widespread affliction, calamity or destructive influx, especially when seen as divine retribution.
Synonyms
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 "plague", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).