à bon chat, bon rat

/\a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\/ phrase

Letters

19 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

à bon chat, bon rat is aFrenchphrase. It means: À bonne attaque, bonne défense. Pronounced \a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\.

Key facts for à bon chat, bon rat
PropertyValue
Headwordà bon chat, bon rat
LanguageFrench
Part of speechPhrase
IPA\a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\
Letters19
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

à bon chat, bon rat 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 à bon chat, bon rat is 19 letters long, classified as aphrase, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for à bon chat, bon rat 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 à bon chat, bon rat, spelled À- -B-O-N- -C-H-A-T-,- -B-O-N- -R-A-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    À bonne attaque, bonne défense.
  2. 2
    L’adversaire est prompt à la riposte.
  3. 3
    Un attaquant et un attaqué se fortifient l’un l’autre au gré de leurs rencontres.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "à bon chat, bon rat"?
"à bon chat, bon rat" is spelled À- -B-O-N- -C-H-A-T-,- -B-O-N- -R-A-T. The IPA pronunciation is \a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\.
What does "à bon chat, bon rat" mean?
As a phrase, "à bon chat, bon rat" means: À bonne attaque, bonne défense.
How do you pronounce "à bon chat, bon rat"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "à bon chat, bon rat" is \a bɔ̃ ʃa bɔ̃ ʁa\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "à bon chat, bon rat" come from?
"à bon chat, bon rat" 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 À 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.