deja-vu
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "deja-vu", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "deja-vu" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "deja-vu" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
déjà vu is aEnglishnoun. It means: The subjective, unexpected feeling of having experienced something before, especially when that is not the case. Pronounced /ˌdeɪ.ʒɑː ˈvuː/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | déjà vu |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌdeɪ.ʒɑː ˈvuː/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for déjà vu is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌdeɪ.ʒɑː ˈvuː/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for déjà vu in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.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.
Etymologically, the entry records: Unadapted borrowing from French déjà vu (literally “already seen”), coined by Émile Boirac in Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, 1876. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is déjà vu, spelled D-É-J-À- -V-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The subjective, unexpected feeling of having experienced something before, especially when that is not the case.
- 2Loosely or humorously, anything one has done before or is being repeated.
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French déjà vu (literally “already seen”), coined by Émile Boirac in Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, 1876.
Synonyms
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: