Umlaut

/\ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\/ noun

Letters

6 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

Umlaut is aFrenchnoun. It means: Signe typographique des langues germaniques, d’apparence assez semblable au tréma du français, mais dont l’usage est de modifier le son de la voyelle à laquelle il est attaché. Pronounced \ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\.

Key facts for Umlaut
PropertyValue
HeadwordUmlaut
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\
Letters6
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Umlaut is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for Umlaut is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Signe typographique des langues germaniques, d’apparence assez semblable au tréma du français, mais dont l’usage est de modifier le son de la voyelle à laquelle il est attaché.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for Umlaut in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

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. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is Umlaut, spelled U-M-L-A-U-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Signe typographique des langues germaniques, d’apparence assez semblable au tréma du français, mais dont l’usage est de modifier le son de la voyelle à laquelle il est attaché.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "Umlaut"?
"Umlaut" is spelled U-M-L-A-U-T. The IPA pronunciation is \ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\.
What does "Umlaut" mean?
As a noun, "Umlaut" means: Signe typographique des langues germaniques, d’apparence assez semblable au tréma du français, mais dont l’usage est de modifier le son de la voyelle à laquelle il est attaché.
How do you pronounce "Umlaut"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "Umlaut" is \ˈʊm.laʊ̯t\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "Umlaut" come from?
"Umlaut" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter U in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.