avoir lieu
\a.vwaʁ ljø\
The verdict
“avoir lieu” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Se passer ou se dérouler dans un endroit.
Corpus desk
Index FR-avoir-lieu · avoir lieu · French
avoir lieu · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-6 6 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 lieu |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \a.vwaʁ ljø\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « avoir lieu » en français
Rare enough to double-check
avoir lieu is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \a.vwaʁ ljø\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Se passer ou se dérouler dans un endroit.".
avoir lieu doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 avoir lieu, spelled A-V-O-I-R- -L-I-E-U.
Definition
- 1Se passer ou se dérouler dans un endroit.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how avoir lieu appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Déjà, depuis le début de l'année, des fédérations avaient lieu de village à village, de ville à ville.
Le pré-festival a lieu depuis hier et jusqu’à ce soir.
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.