laissez-faire
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
13 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "laissez-faire", 13-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "laissez-faire" 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 "laissez-faire" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
laissez faire is aEnglishnoun. It means: A policy of governmental non-interference in economic affairs. Pronounced /ˈlæseɪ ˌfɛə(ɹ)/.
Compare similar words
See how laissez faire compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | laissez faire |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈlæseɪ ˌfɛə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for laissez faire is 13 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈlæseɪ ˌfɛə(ɹ)/. 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 frequent misspelling variants are recorded for laissez faire in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English 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.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from French laissez faire (“leave it be”, literally “let do”). 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 laissez faire, spelled L-A-I-S-S-E-Z- -F-A-I-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A policy of governmental non-interference in economic affairs.
- 2A policy of non-interference by authority in any competitive process.
Etymology
Borrowed from French laissez faire (“leave it be”, literally “let do”).
This word in other languages
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "laissez faire"?
What does "laissez faire" mean?
How do you pronounce "laissez faire"?
What is the origin of the word "laissez faire"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: