poisson-chat
\pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\
The verdict
“poisson-chat” 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
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Nom vernaculaire de plusieurs genres de poissons d'eau douce de l’ordre des siluriformes, par exemple le poisson-chat commun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | poisson-chat |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “poisson-chat” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for poisson-chat is 12 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Nom vernaculaire de plusieurs genres de poissons d'eau douce de l’ordre des siluriformes, par exemple le poisson-chat commun.".
Zero misspellings are on record for poisson-chat in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
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 poisson-chat, spelled P-O-I-S-S-O-N---C-H-A-T.
Definition
- 1Nom vernaculaire de plusieurs genres de poissons d'eau douce de l’ordre des siluriformes, par exemple le poisson-chat commun.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “poisson-chat”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-O-I-S-S-O-N---C-H-A-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\ (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
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.