tangent
\tɑ̃.ʒɑ̃\
The verdict
“tangent” is uncommon French (frequency #58,975 among 3,703 “T” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #58,975
- frequency rank, French
- 3,703
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Qui touche une ligne ou une surface en un seul point en faisant avec elle un angle nul.
Corpus desk
Index FR-tangent · tangent · French
tangent · rank #58,975 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #58,975
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,703
- PHOTO-FINISH tamponner
Nearest frequency peer: tamponner (-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 « tangent »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- taies
taies
41,029 corpus weight
- tails
tails
41,028 corpus weight
- tamponner
tamponner
41,027 corpus weight
- tangent
tangent
41,026 corpus weight
- tannique
tannique
41,025 corpus weight
- tantale
tantale
41,024 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « tangent » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tangent |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \tɑ̃.ʒɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #58,975 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « tangent » en français
Rare enough to double-check
tangent is uncommon French at frequency #58,975 among 3,703 “T” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \tɑ̃.ʒɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for tangent in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 tangent, spelled T-A-N-G-E-N-T.
Definition
- 1Qui touche une ligne ou une surface en un seul point en faisant avec elle un angle nul.
- 2Qui est près de réussir quelque chose ; qui approche de justesse d’un résultat.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tangent appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un plan tangent à une sphère.
Cela a comme conséquence l’existence d’un plan tangent en tout point du support Σ de x et donc aussi l’existence du vecteur (∂x)/(∂u)(u,v)∧(∂x)/(∂v)(u,v) normal à cette surface.
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 "tangent", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).