avaler de travers
\a.va.le də tʁa.vɛʁ\
The verdict
“avaler de travers” is outside the top-ranked French vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Faire une fausse route, s’étouffer avec un aliment.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | avaler de travers |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \a.va.le də tʁa.vɛʁ\ |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “avaler de travers” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for avaler de travers is 17 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \a.va.le də tʁa.vɛʁ\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for avaler de travers in our index, 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. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is avaler de travers, spelled A-V-A-L-E-R- -D-E- -T-R-A-V-E-R-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Faire une fausse route, s’étouffer avec un aliment.
- 2Ne pas tolérer une situation.
Synonyms
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “avaler de travers, French word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/fr/mot/avaler-de-travers
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Using “avaler de travers”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is A-V-A-L-E-R- -D-E- -T-R-A-V-E-R-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \a.va.le də tʁa.vɛʁ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our French index: