avoir la tête sur les épaules

/\a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\/ verb

The verdict

“avoir la tête sur les épaules” 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
29
letters

Dominant Wiktionary sense: Être bien équilibré.

Key facts for avoir la tête sur les épaules
PropertyValue
Headwordavoir la tête sur les épaules
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\
Letters29
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “avoir la tête sur les épaules” sits in French frequency

avoir la tête sur les épaules falls outside the top-100,000 ranked French words — the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for avoir la tête sur les épaules is 29 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Être bien équilibré.".

No misspelling variants are generated for avoir la tête sur les épaules 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 avoir la tête sur les épaules, spelled A-V-O-I-R- -L-A- -T-Ê-T-E- -S-U-R- -L-E-S- -É-P-A-U-L-E-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Être bien équilibré.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "avoir la tête sur les épaules"?
"avoir la tête sur les épaules" is spelled A-V-O-I-R- -L-A- -T-Ê-T-E- -S-U-R- -L-E-S- -É-P-A-U-L-E-S. The IPA pronunciation is \a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\.
What does "avoir la tête sur les épaules" mean?
As a verb, "avoir la tête sur les épaules" means: Être bien équilibré.
How do you pronounce "avoir la tête sur les épaules"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "avoir la tête sur les épaules" is \a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "avoir la tête sur les épaules" come from?
"avoir la tête sur les épaules" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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.

Using “avoir la tête sur les épaules”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct French spelling is A-V-O-I-R- -L-A- -T-Ê-T-E- -S-U-R- -L-E-S- -É-P-A-U-L-E-S — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Say it as \a.vwaʁ la tɛt syʁ lɛ.z‿e.pol\ (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:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.