Skip to main content
PlainSpell

carie

French, noun

carie is a French feminine noun meaning “decay (uncountable), cavity (countable) (process or result of bone or teeth being gradually decomposed)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). With an accent, carié is a different word: “past participle of carier”. The French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) defines it as “Destruction des os et des dents par voie d’ulcération”.

What does carie mean in English?

noun

  1. 1

    femininedecay (uncountable), cavity (countable) (process or result of bone or teeth being gradually decomposed)

  2. 2

    femininerot (process of a plant becoming rotten)

  3. 3

    femininerust (disease of cereals in which the grain is replaced by the spores of a reddish-brown fungus in genus Uredo)

verb

as carié
  1. 1

    past participle of carier

Source: English Wiktionary, French section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

How French dictionaries define it

noun: 1. Destruction des os et des dents par voie d’ulcération. 2. Maladie analogue par ses effets à la carie des animaux. Elle consiste en une altération progressive de la substance ligneuse des arbres, suivie de ramollissement. 3. Maladie des graines céréales dans laquelle la farine est remplacée par une poussière qui n’est autre chose que la substance d’un champignon du genre Uredo (Uredo caries).

adjective: 1. Qui est atteint de carie. 2. Qualifie une céréale atteinte par la carie. 3. Qui pourrit. 4. Abimé, dégradé.

The definition in the French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), in French.

Source: French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.

Forms of carie

  • caries plural
  • cariée feminine
  • cariés masculine plural
  • cariées feminine plural

Source: English Wiktionary and French Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).

English words that translate to carie

Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.

How common is carie in French?

carie appears about once in every 1 million words in written French.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).