ricaner
\ʁi.ka.ne\
The verdict
“ricaner” is uncommon French (frequency #54,852 among 5,742 “R” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #54,852
- frequency rank, French
- 5,742
- “R” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Rire avec une affectation d’impertinence et dans une intention de moquerie.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ricaner · ricaner · French
ricaner · rank #54,852 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #54,852
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,742
- PHOTO-FINISH rinçage
Nearest frequency peer: rinçage (+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 « ricaner »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- ressuscitée
ressuscitée
45,153 corpus weight
- reviendraie…
reviendraient
45,152 corpus weight
- revoyez
revoyez
45,151 corpus weight
- ricaner
ricaner
45,149 corpus weight
- rinçage
rinçage
45,148 corpus weight
- roar
roar
45,146 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « ricaner » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ricaner |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \ʁi.ka.ne\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #54,852 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « ricaner » en français
Rare enough to double-check
ricaner is uncommon French at frequency #54,852 among 5,742 “R” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \ʁi.ka.ne\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for ricaner, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct French form is ricaner, spelled R-I-C-A-N-E-R.
Definition
- 1Rire avec une affectation d’impertinence et dans une intention de moquerie.
- 2Faire un rictus.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ricaner appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Elle avait pris avec elle son baisenville, le tenant fermement sous le bras, bourré à souhait et elle ricanait, peut-être d'elle-même, mais ça on l'ignorera longtemps, de toutes ses dents pointues et noires, en regardant tantôt Chérubin, tantôt Nhiburec.
Pourtant, il ne fit rien pour la tourmenter, en raison sans doute de son aversion pour elle. Il me demandait souvent des nouvelles de l’enfant quand il me rencontrait ; lorsqu’il apprit le prénom qu’on lui avait donné, il ricana un sourire et me dit : …
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 "ricaner", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).