qu
French, noun
qu is spelled Q-U (2 letters) and appears 5,754 times per million words in written French, the 27th most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Qu is a French masculine noun meaning “alternative spelling of ku” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). On this page, qu' is a different word: “apocopic form of que (“what”)”. The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Lettre latine Q, q”.
What does qu mean in English?
noun
- 1
masculinealternative spelling of ku
conjunction
- 1
apocopic form of que (“that, which; only; etc.”)
- 2
informalapocopic form of que (“that, which; only; etc.”)
- 3
apocopic form of qui (“who, that, which”)
pronoun
- 1
apocopic form of que (“what”)
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
noun: 1. Lettre latine Q, q.
adjective: 1. Relatif aux mots interrogatifs, surtout à ceux qui sont utilisés aussi comme relatifs, comme qui, que, quand et où.
The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.
Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of qu
- qus plural
- cu
- ku
- Qu-
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How common is qu in French?
qu appears 5,754 times per million words in written French.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).