à contre-sens
\a kɔ̃.tʁe.sɑ̃s\
The verdict
“à contre-sens” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adverb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Variante orthographique de à contresens.
Corpus desk
Index FR-a-contre-sens · à contre-sens · French
à contre-sens · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-4 4 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-sens |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \a kɔ̃.tʁe.sɑ̃s\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « à contre-sens » en français
Rare enough to double-check
à contre-sens is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anadverb, transcribed \a kɔ̃.tʁe.sɑ̃s\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Variante orthographique de à contresens.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for à contre-sens in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No explicit etymology string is stored 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-sens, spelled À- -C-O-N-T-R-E---S-E-N-S.
Definition
- 1Variante orthographique de à contresens.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how à contre-sens appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
En morcelant des opérations qu’il détaille à l’infini et qu’il répète sans se lasser, le rituel s’adonne à un rapetassage minutieux, il bouche des interstices et il nourrit ainsi l’illusion qu’il est possible de remonter à contre-sens du mythe, de refaire du continu à partir du discontinu.
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.