poisson-chat
\pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\
The verdict
“poisson-chat” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Nom vernaculaire de plusieurs genres de poissons d'eau douce de l’ordre des siluriformes, par exemple le poisson-chat commun.
Corpus desk
Index FR-poisson-chat · poisson-chat · French
poisson-chat · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | poisson-chat |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\ |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « poisson-chat » en français
Rare enough to double-check
poisson-chat is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \pwa.sɔ̃.ʃa\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "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.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how poisson-chat appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Ce jeudi, il s’active dans sa minuscule cuisine de célibataire, à faire cuire un poisson-chat accompagné de purée de pommes de terre, pendant qu’elle se livre à l’inventaire de son butin.
Il pêchait parfois dans le canal situé au-dessus du moulin, alimenté par la rivière, dans les grands calmes où les rotengles, les poissons-chats et les carpes venaient se nourrir de grains concassés en balançant leurs flancs dans la lumière.
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.