tam-tam
\tam.tam\
The verdict
“tam-tam” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Instrument de percussion d'origine chinoise, composé généralement d’un disque de métal à bords relevés qui lorsqu’on le frappe avec un maillet recouvert de peau, rend un son très retentissant.
Corpus desk
Index FR-tam-tam · tam-tam · French
tam-tam · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tam-tam |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \tam.tam\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « tam-tam » en français
Rare enough to double-check
tam-tam is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \tam.tam\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for tam-tam, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is tam-tam, spelled T-A-M---T-A-M.
Definition
- 1Instrument de percussion d'origine chinoise, composé généralement d’un disque de métal à bords relevés qui lorsqu’on le frappe avec un maillet recouvert de peau, rend un son très retentissant.
- 2Instrument de percussion africain de la famille des tambours.
- 3Publicité tapageuse ; tapage publicitaire.
- 4Système ayant permis d’envoyer de courts messages écrits vers des appareils mobiles légers, à présent disparu et remplacé par le SMS du téléphone mobile.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tam-tam appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
En tête, une bande d’Arabes dansent au son du tam-tam, en agitant en l’air de longues perches enroulées de banderoles d’or.
Le tam-tam emplit la pièce d’un tumulte assourdissant.
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). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.