arrière-pensée
\a.ʁjɛʁ.pɑ̃.se\
The verdict
“arrière-pensée” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Pensée que l’on tient secrète, intention que l’on cache, tandis qu’on en manifeste une autre.
Corpus desk
Index FR-arriere-pensee · arrière-pensée · French
arrière-pensée · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "A" 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 | arrière-pensée |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \a.ʁjɛʁ.pɑ̃.se\ |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « arrière-pensée » en français
Rare enough to double-check
arrière-pensée is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \a.ʁjɛʁ.pɑ̃.se\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Pensée que l’on tient secrète, intention que l’on cache, tandis qu’on en manifeste une autre.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for arrière-pensée, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is arrière-pensée, spelled A-R-R-I-È-R-E---P-E-N-S-É-E.
Definition
- 1Pensée que l’on tient secrète, intention que l’on cache, tandis qu’on en manifeste une autre.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how arrière-pensée appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Une lettre comme celle que je tiens, écrite par une jeune fille, une vraie jeune fille, sans arrière-pensée, avec enthousiasme…
Cette triste réflexion, […], fut le dernier calcul de sa diplomatie expirante. Dès lors il n'eut plus d'arrière-pensées, devint le jouet de son amour […].
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.