à contre-courant
\a kɔ̃.tʁə ku.ʁɑ̃\
The verdict
“à contre-courant” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - En allant en sens inverse du courant d’un cours d’eau, d’un flux.
Corpus desk
Index FR-a-contre-courant · à contre-courant · French
à contre-courant · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "À" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | à contre-courant |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \a kɔ̃.tʁə ku.ʁɑ̃\ |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « à contre-courant » en français
Rare enough to double-check
à contre-courant is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb, transcribed \a kɔ̃.tʁə ku.ʁɑ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for à contre-courant in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is à contre-courant, spelled À- -C-O-N-T-R-E---C-O-U-R-A-N-T.
Definition
- 1En allant en sens inverse du courant d’un cours d’eau, d’un flux.
- 2Dans le sens contraire de l’habitude, de la norme, de l’usage.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how à contre-courant appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
En taillant sa route perpendiculaire à travers le Grand Canal, c’est bien le traghetto qui créait la confusion la plus notoire. Mais c’était un embarras distant, commis à contre-courant, au nom d’une efficacité sérieuse.
Si vous vous retrouvez pris dans la baïne, ne tentez pas de rejoindre la terre ferme en nageant à contre-courant.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.