autodafé

\o.to.da.fe\

/\o.to.da.fe\/ noun

The verdict

“autodafé” is uncommon French (frequency #74,580 among 6,727 “A” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#74,580
frequency rank, French
6,727
“A” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Cérémonie dans laquelle l’Inquisition faisait exécuter ses jugements.

Corpus desk

Index FR-autodafe · autodafé · French

autodafé · rank #74,580 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #74,580
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,727
  • PHOTO-FINISH auster

Nearest frequency peer: auster (-1 rank slots)

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.

Rangs de longue queue près de « autodafé »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « autodafé » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for autodafé
PropertyValue
Headwordautodafé
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\o.to.da.fe\
Letters8
Frequency rank#74,580
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « autodafé » en français

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).autodafétombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Voisins rares de la même bande: « auster » (#74,579), « aza » (#74,581), « Aussie » (#74,578). Parmi 6,727 lemmes en « A », « autodafé » est au #74,580. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

autodafé is uncommon French at frequency #74,580 among 6,727 “A” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed \o.to.da.fe\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for autodafé, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. 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. The correct French form is autodafé, spelled A-U-T-O-D-A-F-É.

Definition

  1. 1
    Cérémonie dans laquelle l’Inquisition faisait exécuter ses jugements.
  2. 2
    Exécution des jugements qui condamnaient au supplice du feu.
  3. 3
    Acte de brûler des livres ou des bibliothèques.
  4. 4
    Destruction massive.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how autodafé appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. On sent que s’il le pouvait il rétablirait l’inquisition et les autodafés, rien que pour se donner la joie âcre et cruelle de condamner les Juifs et de les voir rôtir à petit feu. Il en convient d’ailleurs sans peine. […]. On comprend aussitôt pourquoi M. Drumont flétrit la Révolution. C’est qu'elle nous a conduit au point où il faut nous arrêter ; c’est…
  2. Mais il semble qu’avec les autodafés du Vatican et le taux d’usure des parchemins, il ait disparu de la surface de la terre.

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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "autodafé"?
"autodafé" is spelled A-U-T-O-D-A-F-É. The IPA pronunciation is \o.to.da.fe\.
What does "autodafé" mean?
As a noun, "autodafé" means: Cérémonie dans laquelle l’Inquisition faisait exécuter ses jugements.
How do you pronounce "autodafé"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "autodafé" is \o.to.da.fe\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "autodafé" come from?
"autodafé" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "autodafé", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list