spade
\ˈspeɪd\
The verdict
“spade” is uncommon French (frequency #65,534 among 6,032 “S” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #65,534
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Bêche, pelle.
Corpus desk
Index FR-spade · spade · French
spade · rank #65,534 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #65,534
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH soutiré
Nearest frequency peer: soutiré (-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 « spade »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- soumette
soumette
34,470 corpus weight
- soutiré
soutiré
34,468 corpus weight
- spade
spade
34,467 corpus weight
- Speer
Speer
34,466 corpus weight
- spiruline
spiruline
34,465 corpus weight
- SPL
SPL
34,464 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « spade » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spade |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ˈspeɪd\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #65,534 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « spade » en français
Rare enough to double-check
spade is uncommon French at frequency #65,534 among 6,032 “S” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ˈspeɪd\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for spade, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is spade, spelled S-P-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1Bêche, pelle.
- 2Pique.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how spade appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“Make your mind easy,” Ratsey said; “I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.”
The four suits in a deck of cards are clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. (trèfle, carreau, cœur, pique)
Synonyms
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 "spade", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).