porc-épic
The verdict
“porc-épic” 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
- 9
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: Quadrupède rongeur des deux familles Hystridae et Erethizontidae, dont le corps est armé de piquants, qu’il dresse pour se défendre.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | porc-épic |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \pɔʁ.k‿e.pik\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “porc-épic” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for porc-épic is 9 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \pɔʁ.k‿e.pik\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for porc-épic in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is porc-épic, spelled P-O-R-C---É-P-I-C, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Quadrupède rongeur des deux familles Hystridae et Erethizontidae, dont le corps est armé de piquants, qu’il dresse pour se défendre.
- 2Meuble représentant l’animal du même nom dans les armoiries. Il est généralement représenté passant, haut sur pattes avec de longues épines.
This word in other languages
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "porc-épic"?
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Using “porc-épic”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is P-O-R-C---É-P-I-C — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \pɔʁ.k‿e.pik\ (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
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our French index: