rapière
\ʁa.pjɛʁ\
The verdict
“rapière” is uncommon French (frequency #90,099 among 5,742 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #90,099
- frequency rank, French
- 5,742
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Épée longue et fine, à garde filiforme ou hémisphérique.
Corpus desk
Index FR-rapiere · rapière · French
rapière · rank #90,099 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #90,099
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,742
- PHOTO-FINISH rangera
Nearest frequency peer: rangera (-2 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 « rapière »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- Rahm
Rahm
9,907 corpus weight
- Rakka
Rakka
9,906 corpus weight
- ramifiée
ramifiée
9,905 corpus weight
- rangera
rangera
9,904 corpus weight
- rapière
rapière
9,902 corpus weight
- ravissent
ravissent
9,898 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « rapière » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rapière |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʁa.pjɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #90,099 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « rapière » en français
Rare enough to double-check
rapière is uncommon French at frequency #90,099 among 5,742 “R” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ʁa.pjɛʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for rapière, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is rapière, spelled R-A-P-I-È-R-E.
Definition
- 1Épée longue et fine, à garde filiforme ou hémisphérique.
- 2Meuble représentant l’arme du même nom dans les armoiries. Cette arme est plus présente en héraldique espagnole qu’en française. Elle se distingue de l’épée par la finesse de sa lame. À rapprocher de badelaire, coutelas, couteau, cimeterre, épée, kriss et sabre.
- 3Couteau (en tant qu’arme).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how rapière appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
René voulait bien porter une rapière…, fût-ce même celle qu'on nommait alors "la massacroire", mais il ne voulait pas s'en servir. C'était le petit clerc le plus doux, le plus timide qui se fût.
À mesure que sa rapière trouait une poitrine et que le sang tiède éclaboussait ses mains et son visage, lui, l’œil dilaté, les narines ouvertes, les dents serrées, regagnait le terrain perdu et se rapprochait de la maison assiégée.
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); 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 "rapière", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).