tapoter

\ta.pɔ.te\

/\ta.pɔ.te\/ verb

The verdict

“tapoter” is uncommon French (frequency #59,677 among 3,703 “T” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#59,677
frequency rank, French
3,703
“T” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Donner de petits coups, des tapotes à plusieurs reprises.

Corpus desk

Index FR-tapoter · tapoter · French

tapoter · rank #59,677 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #59,677
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 3,703
  • PHOTO-FINISH tatin

Nearest frequency peer: tatin (+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 « tapoter »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « tapoter » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for tapoter
PropertyValue
Headwordtapoter
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\ta.pɔ.te\
Letters7
Frequency rank#59,677
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « tapoter » en français

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).tapotertombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Les tics avancent en logarithme; chacun est de l'ordre de dix fois plus rare. Voisins rares de la même bande: « tatin » (#59,678), « tabler » (#59,675), « tchi » (#59,679). Parmi 3,703 lemmes en « T », « tapoter » est au #59,677. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

tapoter is uncommon French at frequency #59,677 among 3,703 “T” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \ta.pɔ.te\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tapoter, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

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 tapoter, spelled T-A-P-O-T-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Donner de petits coups, des tapotes à plusieurs reprises.
  2. 2
    Jouer mal ou négligemment, en parlant d’un pianiste.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how tapoter appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Pendant qu’elle s’asseyait sur le talus, tapotant sa joue comme on tapote une jupe froissée, il sentait des larmes, grosses comme des remords, lui monter aux yeux, mais la pression était cependant trop faible et elles s’arrêtèrent à sa gorge.
  2. En même temps, il glissait sa large patte sous la jupe de la fille qui ne broncha point et tapotait délicatement une callipygie orgueilleuse et prévenante.

Synonyms

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

How do you spell "tapoter"?
"tapoter" is spelled T-A-P-O-T-E-R. The IPA pronunciation is \ta.pɔ.te\.
What does "tapoter" mean?
As a verb, "tapoter" means: Donner de petits coups, des tapotes à plusieurs reprises.
How do you pronounce "tapoter"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "tapoter" is \ta.pɔ.te\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "tapoter" come from?
"tapoter" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "tapoter", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list