tunnelier
\ty.nə.lje\
The verdict
“tunnelier” is uncommon French (frequency #90,271 among 3,703 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #90,271
- frequency rank, French
- 3,703
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Ouvrier chargé de creuser des tunnels.
Corpus desk
Index FR-tunnelier · tunnelier · French
tunnelier · rank #90,271 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #90,271
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,703
- PHOTO-FINISH trésoreries
Nearest frequency peer: trésoreries (-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 « tunnelier »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- trouvables
trouvables
9,732 corpus weight
- trésoreries
trésoreries
9,731 corpus weight
- tunnelier
tunnelier
9,730 corpus weight
- twee
twee
9,729 corpus weight
- ula
ula
9,726 corpus weight
- ulcérés
ulcérés
9,725 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « tunnelier » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tunnelier |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ty.nə.lje\ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #90,271 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « tunnelier » en français
Rare enough to double-check
tunnelier is uncommon French at frequency #90,271 among 3,703 “T” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \ty.nə.lje\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tunnelier, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored 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 tunnelier, spelled T-U-N-N-E-L-I-E-R.
Definition
- 1Ouvrier chargé de creuser des tunnels.
- 2Engin de génie civil servant à creuser des tunnels, travaillant en continu et à pleine section.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tunnelier appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Ce qui m’a le plus frappé, c’est la pureté des glaises, granits, schistes et sables dans lesquels les tunneliers enfoncent leurs énormes fraises.
Le tunnelier chargé de creuser la ligne B du métro de Rennes a rencontré des difficultés des filons d’antimoine, un minerai semi-métallique dangereux pour la santé, sur le tracé, obligeant la Société d’Économie Mixte des Transports Collectifs de l’Agglomération Rennaise (Semtcar) à recourir à une installation de stockage dédiée.
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 "tunnelier", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 9 letters (nearest by frequency rank).