raté
French, noun
raté is spelled R-A-T-É (4 letters) and appears 25 times per million words in written French, the 3,192nd most frequent French word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Raté is a French masculine noun meaning “a failure, a washout, a loser” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is also a past participle of rater. Without its accent, rate is a different word: “spleen”. The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Personne qui n’a pas réussi dans une entreprise, dans une démarche, dans sa vie etc”.
What does raté mean in English?
adjective
- 1
informalfailed, screwed up
- 2
informalmissed
noun
- 1
colloquialderogatorymasculinea failure, a washout, a loser
verb
- 1
past participle of rater
noun
- 1
femininespleen
noun
- 1
femininefemale equivalent of rat: female rat
verb
- 1
first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
- 2
second-person singular imperative
Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How French dictionaries define it
adjective: 1. Qui a raté, qui a échoué, qui n’a pas atteint son but. 2. Mangé, rongé par les rats.
noun: 1. Personne qui n’a pas réussi dans une entreprise, dans une démarche, dans sa vie etc.
noun: 1. Manque de succès. 2. Cycle d’un moteur où l’allumage n’eut pas lieu.
noun: 1. Viscère mou, situé dans l’hypocondre gauche, entre l’estomac et les fausses côtes.
noun: 1. Femelle du rat.
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 raté
- rates plural
- ratée feminine
- ratés masculine plural
- ratées feminine plural
- rat
- ratte rare
Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
English words that translate to raté
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is raté in French?
raté appears 25 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).