reculade

\ʁə.ky.lad\

/\ʁə.ky.lad\/ noun

The verdict

“reculade” is uncommon French (frequency #84,230 among 5,742 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#84,230
frequency rank, French
5,742
“R” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Mouvement en arrière.

Corpus desk

Index FR-reculade · reculade · French

reculade · rank #84,230 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #84,230
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,742
  • PHOTO-FINISH redessinée

Nearest frequency peer: redessinée (+1 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 « reculade »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « reculade » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for reculade
PropertyValue
Headwordreculade
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ʁə.ky.lad\
Letters8
Frequency rank#84,230
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « reculade » en français

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).reculadetombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Voisins rares de la même bande: « redessinée » (#84,231), « recognition » (#84,228), « redevenait » (#84,232). Parmi 5,742 lemmes en « R », « reculade » est au #84,230. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

reculade is uncommon French at frequency #84,230 among 5,742 “R” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ʁə.ky.lad\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for reculade, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. Our dataset records no confusable match here, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is reculade, spelled R-E-C-U-L-A-D-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Mouvement en arrière.
  2. 2
    Mouvement de ceux qui, s’étant trop avancés, sont obligés de faire des pas en arrière.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how reculade appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Quand l'officier revint au palais, un air de bonheur et de joie avait succédé sur sa figure au subit effroi que la reculade du cheval y avait imprimé ; ….
  2. « Très vite, nous dûmes déménager, parce que le loyer de notre premier appartement était trop élevé pour nous. De reculade en reculade, nous échouâmes ici… »

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

How do you spell "reculade"?
"reculade" is spelled R-E-C-U-L-A-D-E. The IPA pronunciation is \ʁə.ky.lad\.
What does "reculade" mean?
As a noun, "reculade" means: Mouvement en arrière.
How do you pronounce "reculade"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "reculade" is \ʁə.ky.lad\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "reculade" come from?
"reculade" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "reculade", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list