avoir avalé sa langue
\a.vwa.ʁ‿a.va.le sa lɑ̃ɡ\
The verdict
“avoir avalé sa langue” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Garder le silence.
Corpus desk
Index FR-avoir-avale-sa-langue · avoir avalé sa langue · French
avoir avalé sa langue · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 21 letters
- VOW-10 10 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 | avoir avalé sa langue |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \a.vwa.ʁ‿a.va.le sa lɑ̃ɡ\ |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « avoir avalé sa langue » en français
Rare enough to double-check
avoir avalé sa langue is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \a.vwa.ʁ‿a.va.le sa lɑ̃ɡ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Garder le silence.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for avoir avalé sa langue, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is avoir avalé sa langue, spelled A-V-O-I-R- -A-V-A-L-É- -S-A- -L-A-N-G-U-E.
Definition
- 1Garder le silence.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how avoir avalé sa langue appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un correspondant du Daily Herald voulut interviewer Guimauve sur son système de socialisation des femmes, mais Guimauve se refusa à tout entretien. Il avait avalé sa langue.
Personne n’arrivait à placer un mot ni à proférer une consolation, toute la ville avait avalé sa langue dépassée par le triste sort du jeune homme.
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.