spiral
\spi.ʁal\
The verdict
“spiral” is uncommon French (frequency #51,755 among 6,032 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #51,755
- frequency rank, French
- 6,032
- “S” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui a la forme d’une spirale.
Corpus desk
Index FR-spiral · spiral · French
spiral · rank #51,755 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #51,755
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,032
- PHOTO-FINISH sphincter
Nearest frequency peer: sphincter (-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 « spiral »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- soulevait
soulevait
48,249 corpus weight
- spacieuses
spacieuses
48,248 corpus weight
- sphincter
sphincter
48,247 corpus weight
- spiral
spiral
48,246 corpus weight
- squatteurs
squatteurs
48,245 corpus weight
- stora
stora
48,243 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « spiral » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | spiral |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \spi.ʁal\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #51,755 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « spiral » en français
Rare enough to double-check
spiral is uncommon French at frequency #51,755 among 6,032 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \spi.ʁal\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
spiral doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is spiral, spelled S-P-I-R-A-L.
Definition
- 1Qui a la forme d’une spirale.
- 2Qui a la forme d'une hélice
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how spiral appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
En horlogerie, le ressort spiral est un petit ressort enroulé en spirale et constituant avec le balancier l'organe réglant de la montre mécanique. Il ramène le balancier à sa position de départ à la fin de chaque alternance.
Dans ces conditions, au lieu de s'enrouler autour d'un cylindre, la valve se tord autour de sa ligne médiane de façon à prendre la forme d'un escalier spiral (pl. 4, fig. 6).
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 "spiral", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).